GDAP Current Projects

With a focus on establishing consistency, GDAP oversees a number of assessments of key parameters related to Earth’s energy and water cycles as well as the development of a GEWEX Integrated Product that incorporates several previously supported energy and water flux datasets into a long-term product on a common grid for energy and water cycle closure studies GDAP also sponsors ground-based observing networks that provide high-quality, calibrated, observations for evaluating satellite data sets.

SPONSORED NETWORKS

• Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN)
  Chair: Christian Lanconelli (2018–present)
  Station, Project, and Staff Directory
  Publications
  Available products: World Radiation Monitoring Center (WRMC) Archive

  BSRN provides highly accurate worldwide radiative flux measurements to validate satellite-based measurements. Develop instrument requirements, establish BSRN reference stations worldwide, and assemble a database.

• International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN)
  Contact: Wouter Dorigo
  Project, and Staff Directory
  Publications
  Available Networks

  The International Soil Moisture Network is an international cooperation to establish and maintain a global in-situ soil moisture database. This database is an essential means for validating and improving global satellite products, and land surface, climate, and hydrological models.

• Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC)
  Head: Dr. Stephanie Hänsel
  Deputy Head: Markus Ziese
  Product information
  Available products

  The Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) provides global precipitation analyses for monitoring and research of the Earth’s climate.

International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project – Next Generation (ISCCP-NG)

GDAP is also coordinating the formation of a new international effort to advance the next-generation International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP). The goal of the ISCCP-NG effort will be to maintain continuity of the ISCCP while developing new global cloud products that exploit the increased spatial and temporal resolution, spectral diversity, and improved calibration afforded by advanced geostationary imagers to support new research and applications.

Through a series of workshops, GDAP is facilitating the gathering of international community input to maximize the benefits of the ISCCP-NG product for meeting user needs.

For a review of the first 40 years of ISCCP, view the History of the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project report. It covers the planning and inception of ISCCP and its evolution, including two version updates.

GDAP ASSESSMENTS

Guide to Conducting Data Set Quality Assessments
Data Set Quality Assessments: Needs, Benefits, Best Practices and Governance – December 2015

This document addresses the need for systematic assessments of the quality of data sets used in various applications such as climate services and climate science, including their use in the evaluation of climate model performance.

Ongoing Assessments

• • Water Vapor Phase II
    Chairs: Marc Schröder and Lei Shi
    Quantifying the state of the art in water vapor products being constructed for climate applications.
    For more information, see the GEWEX Water Vapor Assessment (GVAP) website.
  • Global Precipitation Products
    Leads: Z. Haddad and R. Roca
    A joint project of the http://www.isac.cnr.it/~ipwg/about.html (CGMS-IPWG) and of GEWEX toward a Broad Scope Assessment of Global Precipitation Products.
    For more information, click here.

New Integrated Assessments

• • Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI)
    Leads: Benoit Meyssignac and Tim Boyer
    To address the growing urgency in assessing the fundamental question of where the excess heat in the climate system resulting from increased concentrations of greenhouse gases goes, GDAP has initiated an assessment of the annual mean net energy absorbed by the Earth, referred to as Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI). EEI is a fundamental variable defining the status of global climate change but is very challenging to estimate from observations. A wide range of EEI estimates are available, often with error bars that are difficult to robustly trace to measurement principles. Within the consistency paradigm, GDAP will assess the current available EEI estimates from observations. Since the ocean stores more than 90% of the total planetary heat uptake, the EEI assessment focuses on intercomparing estimates of the time rate of change of ocean heat content (ocean heat uptake). This first EEI assessment will focus on:

    (a) understanding the spread of global and regional ocean heat content and ocean heating rate among products,

    (b) determining systematic errors that depend on assumptions, models, and combined observations, and

    (c) understanding the spread of uncertainties depending on the method and formulae used.”

  • Land Surface

    The GDAP and GLASS panels are initiating a cross-panel land surface energy and water cycle closure assessment that will seek to bridge scales from local/in situ measurements and process models to the large regional domains characterized by satellite products and global models. A community workshop will be held soon to define this activity.