Mission: to promote continuity and maintenance of high quality climate observations and long-term data sets for monitoring, understanding, modelling and assessing Earth’s climate system
The WCRP
Observation and Assimilation Panel (WOAP) is co-sponsored by the GCOS
(Global Climate Observation System).
WOAP consists of a panel of representatives from all of the other activities in WCRP (projects and working groups) and GCOS to deal with cross cutting issues related to global observations, their analysis and assimilation, and the resulting products from a research perspective on behalf of WCRP and GCOS.
WOAP is complementary to the GCOS Panels and it includes representatives from the WCRP/GCOS co-sponsored panels AOPC
(Atmospheric Observation Panel for Climate), OOPC
(Ocean Observation Panel for Climate) and Terrestrial Observation Panel for Climate (TOPC) to
establish requirements of climate researchers for in situ as well as satellite observation networks and systems. WOAP, AOPC, OOPC and TOPC also serve the research community in the collection and reanalysis of climate observations in order to better describe the structure and variability of the climate system, as well as climate change. WCRP exploits observations and re-analyses in its input to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports and other wide-ranging policy advice.
WOAP also has representatives from the WCRP modeling working groups, as models are essential to analyze observations, and assimilation of observations provides fields for initializing climate predictions with models. It therefore also provides a forum for exploring modeling and prediction observational needs. WOAP further includes representatives from the WCRP projects, who typically lead in process studies but whose activities are necessarily set in a global context. WOAP also explores mechanisms for the management, stewardship and access of data (WCRP's Data Management),
climate system data assimilation, synthesis, reprocessing and reanalysis of observations. In addition, WOAP interacts and represents WCRP on observational issues with the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).
WOAP activities:
> WOAP identifies climate observational requirements;
> helps optimize observations;
> provides a forum and focal point for WCRP observational issues;
> promotes and coordinates analysis, reprocessing, reanalysis and assimilation;
> promotes and coordinates information and data management activities, including web sites.
The Third Meeting of WCRP Observation and Assimilation Panel (WOAP-3) was held September 2008 in Boulder, CO, USA. A major concern at the meeting was the development and improvement of climate data records which are used for studies and assessments of climate variability and change (report).
Examples of WOAP accomplishments:
> WCRP places very high priority on obtaining and using the highest possible quality observations and derived products, with continuity over time to ensure their use in climate change assessments and climate research. This includes promoting reprocessing of observations, especially those from space-based platforms, as well as reanalysis of the observations into global gridded physically consistent fields.
> WCRP has led re-analysis efforts since they started for the atmosphere in 1988, and WOAP now provides ongoing leadership in promoting reanalysis and expanding it to embrace ocean re-analysis and even whole Earth system re-analysis.
> A series of three WCRP reanalysis conferences have been held, with the first in 1997 at NOAA, USA; the second in 1999 in Reading, UK; and the Third WCRP International Conference on Reanalysis was held in January/February 2008 in Tokyo, Japan (Conference Statement).
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