Joint Weather & Climate Research Programme
Draft strategy - Request for feedback
NERC and the Met Office would like to give the community the opportunity to provide feedback on the draft strategies for the Joint Weather & Climate Research Programme (JWCRP). These inputs will be made available to the programmes Science Strategy Group (SSG) and the proposals considered by the committee.
Responses should be submitted using the pro-forma provided below, and co-ordinated feedback from multiple research groups within a single organisation is welcomed.
Comments should be returned by 30 June 2012.
JWCRP strategies - Background
The delivery of Met Office, NERC and LWEC strategies is critically dependent on close partnership working between NERC and the Met Office. The need for this partnership has led to the development of the Joint Weather & Climate Programme within LWEC. Current development of the JWCRP is being built around four joint science strategies.
The aim of these four strategies is to set out the areas of highest priority joint science and infrastructure development required to meet Met Office, NERC and LWEC strategies, covering the areas of weather research, near term climate prediction, climate change research and short range marine prediction. As well as specific objectives, there are many common themes underlying all four strategies. These include:
The joint development of a world-leading modelling capability for simulating and predicting weather and climate on timescales from hours to centuries, as outlined in the joint Met Office/NERC Earth System Modelling strategy.
The need for improved understanding of key processes to deliver improved model capability and more robust predictions. There are many processes common to problems at all timescales and focus will be given within all the strategies to using a seamless approach to model improvement, where appropriate tools are applied to improve our knowledge and modelling of these key drivers across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.
The need for a spectrum of model configurations ranging from high to low resolution and from complex Earth system models to those with simplified components. Models of reduced resolution or complexity will support our process-level understanding and allow exploration, for example, of probabilistic prediction using ensembles or modelling of past climates.
The optimal use of observations for initialisation, process understanding and model evaluation is essential. The science strategies build on common infrastructure to support our joint observational programme, overseen by the Joint Facilities Group (JFG). In addition, we will work together to exploit international observational datasets.
The four science strategies will be complemented by plans to address some of these issues around common underpinning capability (eg model configurations and evaluation, observational infrastructure, data assimilation techniques) and these are currently being developed.
Implementation plans for some well-defined areas of work which may sit in one or more of the strategies are already being taken forward (eg Earth system modelling). Others will include key science and high profile policy topics. Methods such as workshops or tiger teams bringing together Met Office and NERC staff to agree joint action plans will be employed.
The strategies can be downloaded individually:
Near term climate prediction (17KB)
Climate change research (64KB)
Short-range marine prediction (24KB)
They are also available as a single file:
JWCRP draft strategies (107KB)
Please respond by completing the pro-forma below and sending it to serei@nerc.ac.uk by 30 June 2012.
In providing feedback on these drafts the SSG have suggested the following questions could be address:
- Do you agree with the overall science direction?
- Can these strategies be better focused and are there any critical omissions?
- In which science areas can the UK have the biggest impact?
Two further strategies are currently under development: climate & weather impacts and data assimilation. It is hoped that first drafts of these strategies will be considered at the next SSG in July.
Contact information
Please address any queries to Sally Reid.
About the programme
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