Atmospheric Water Vapour in the Climate System (WaVaCS)

The WaVaCS final workshop will be held in Paris on September 26-28 2011

Science Themes are:
1) Water vapor time series and trends
2) Cirrus inhomogeneities and relationship to the environmental water vapor field and radiative transfer

The second circular contains the list of registered participants and a first draft of the program.

The proposed Action brings together leading European scientists to address the issue of atmospheric water vapour and its impact on climate. This Action is needed to integrate research carried out in different areas, including: atmospheric monitoring, data analysis and modelling. It brings together expertise that is both unique and timely.

In order to make significant progress in the field of water vapour and climate, it is necessary to integrate knowledge acquired from research based on different methodologies. To achieve this, the Action is structured into 4 working groups which together aim to increase knowledge on observations, theory, and data assimilation in the context of water vapour and climate.

The objective is to offer to the scientific community and the broader Earth Observation community an integrative approach to understanding the processes controlling the atmospheric water vapour distribution, in particular those elements linking water vapour and climate. Beneficiaries of this Action include the meteorological services, space agencies, environmental agencies and policy makers. The specific task of this Action is to promote knowledge dissemination activities at various levels through scientific missions, thematic training schools, support toward conference participation, and special issues in world-class scientific journals.

In order to implement an interdisciplinary approach, the Action will promote and support four cross-cutting Working Groups. The first two activities aim at improving the knowledge on observation systems and processes. The third and fourth activities aim at integrating and structuring this knowledge.

WG1: IMPROVING WATER VAPOUR OBSERVATIONS
WG2: UNDERSTANDING PROCESSES
WG3: MERGING OBSERVATIONS AND MODELLING
WG4: DATA ASSIMILATION TECHNIQUES