To: GCSS WG 5 Polar Clouds
From: J. Curry
Date: April 14, 2001
Re: Newsletter
Here is the latest WG 5 news.
The GCSS-wide meeting has been scheduled at the College de France in Paris, Sept 10-14, 2001. This meeting will include some plenary presentations and also opportunities for the working groups to meet. Details to follow.
The Sixth AMS Conference on Polar Meteorology and Oceanography will be held 14-18 May 2001 in San Diego. Further information on meeting logistics can be found on the AMS web page, http://www.ametsoc.org/AMS/. The conference chair is Jennifer Francis ( francis@imcs.rutgers.edu).
The Arctic Regional Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ARC-MIP) will have its next meeting in Boulder, CO on July 9-10, 2001. The timing and location of this meeting are designed for coordination with the SHEBA meeting held in Boulder July 11-13. Let me know if you are interested in attending this meeting, and I can make sure you are on the ARC-MIP mailing list. A limited amount of travel funds are available. A subsequent ARC-MIP meeting is being planned in Sweden in October 2001 (organized by Colin Jones).
The SHEBA Science Team will be meeting in Boulder CO on July 11-13. SHEBA is interested in having modelers attend the meeting. If you are interested in attending this meeting and are not a member of the SHEBA Science Team, please contact Dick Moritz (dickm@apl.washington.edu) about your interest.
The GCSS Steering Group met in Japan during the week of December 7th. A copy of the WG5 report submitted to this meeting can be found under documents off the home page http://paos.colorado.edu/~curryja/wg5/docs.html
Recommendations for WG5 (as summarized by J. Pinto):
The panel acknowledges WG5's attempt to branch out from SHEBA/FIRE; particularly with representation in the International Cloud Modeling Workshop, in ARM, and its affiliation with ARCMIP. Further steps to get outside community interested in Arctic cloud/radiation/boundary layer parameterization issues need to be taken.
The panel agreed that collaboration with WG2 (Cirrus clouds) would allow the mixed-phase cloud case studies developed in WG5 to be considered by broader scientific commumity. At the same time model intercomparisons conducted in WG2 would be useful for testing cloud parameterizations that are being considered for application in polar regions. This collaboration would leverage the case studies and model parameterizations developed by both working groups. The panel suggest having at least one representative from both working groups at future workshops of WG2 and WG5.
The panel praised ARCMIP for focusing of climate feedback issues revelvant to the polar regions. This has been an extremely important aspect of GCSS that has received limited attention in each of the working groups. The ARCMIP project is an important step in the right direction in WG5's activities. One of the action items of GCSS is to have a GCSS/Climate feedback workshop within the next year.
The panel agreed with WG5 that connections between WG5 activities and GCMs need to be more visible.
A preliminary radiative transfer model intercomparison and evaluation is underway for several cases from SHEBA/FIRE. A preliminary write up on this intercomparison is posted on the publications page, under WG5 Projects, Pinto, Curry and Lane. If you have a r.t. model and would like to participate in this intercomparison, please contact Dana Lane (dana.lane@noaa.gov) or James Pinto (pinto@monsoon.colorado.edu).
The FIRE JGR special issue is now scheduled for publication in June 2001. A total of 28 papers will appear in this issue.
Main progress to report is that an annual cycle of cloud microphysical properties derived from cloud radar is basically completed. Retrievals were attempted even under mixed phase conditions. Information on this data can be obtained from Matt Shupe (mshupe@etl.noaa.gov)
The aircraft turbulent fluxes on the projects page are being recalculated, with filtering that is more consistent with LES models.