History and current status
Building upon the successful work of the Ev-K2-CNR Committee within CEOP, and the mutually agreed-upon importance of high elevation areas in understanding climate and water cycles, the establishment of a regional High Elevations (HE) initiative within the GEWEX/CEOP framework was proposed.
Initial formal proposals were made during the CEOP/IGWCO 12-17 March 2007 Joint Planning Meeting held in Washington DC, USA (to see the associated presentation click here) and subsequently within the 7th CEOP International Implementation Planning Meeting held in Bali, Indonesia, 6-9 September 2007 (to see the associated presentation click here).
The HE Working Group was then set up in early 2008 further to identification of a group of international experts active in high elevation studies which became the HE Steering Committee and creation of a CEOP-HE Secretariat (ceop-he@evk2cnr.org) hosted by the Ev-K2-CNR Committee in Bergamo, Italy. In April, 2008 the 1st CEOP-HE Steering Committee Meeting was held in Padua, Italy to launch the Working Group and define the goal, objectives and actions of HE. Plans were also laid for the elaboration of an integrated HE Science Plan (SP), with the aim to describe the scientific rationale and methods for achieving HE’s specific objectives in line with the goals of CEOP.
Since continuous measurements carried out at high elevation sites are crucial to the proposed study within HE initiative, focus is primarily being placed on use of data from the existing CEOP Reference Sites (CRSs) observatories located at high elevations: CAMP/Tibet (Tibetan Plateau), CAMP Himalayas (Nepal) and Pakistan Karakorum Network (Pakistan). Subsequently, a global network and database of HE observation stations, including but not limited to CRSs, will be created. All of this will aim ultimately towards the development of a coordinated global approach to data collection at high elevations and will promote the execution of comprehensive and consolidated hydro-climatic studies.
