High Elevations at the Fifth CliC SSG Meeting

The principal goal of the WCRP’s Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) project is to assess and quantify the impacts of climate variability and change on components of the cryosphere and its overall stability, and the consequences of these impacts for the climate system. To achieve such goal, CliC develops and coordinates national and international activities related to cryosphere and climate, also promoting projects to recover, archive, and distribute historic data sets.
For more information about CliC, visit the web site http://clic.npolar.no/

Besides scientists of the CliC Scientific Steering Group (SSG) and WCRP/SCAR Steering Group (SG), the meeting was attended by Dr. Gianni Tartari, Chair of CEOP-High Elevations Working Group,  to give a short talk on “The CEOP-High Elevations Initiative” (to see the presentation click here), developed within the GEWEX’s Coordinated Energy and Water Cycle Observation Project (CEOP) to further knowledge on physical and dynamical processes in high elevation areas which regulate and affect the water and energy cycles, while contributing to global hydro-climate studies.
In this contest, the cryosphere is an intrinsic part of the global energy and water cycle, impacting weather, water and energy. Glaciers, snow cover, permafrost and periglacial zone are important components of the cryosphere located in high elevation areas, and which are critical reserves for water supply.  Therefore, a better understanding of the water cycle and its variability, particularly in high altitude regions is important to monitor the cryosphere and the global climate system and research on climate and cryosphere within WCRP’s CLIC project may then benefit from collaboration with CEOP-HE initiative. 

Through promoting development of a coordinated terrestrial monitoring network of high elevation observatories with a global coverage and high quality data products, CEOP-HE seeks to provide a large contribution to the study of interaction between land-surfaces and atmosphere at high altitude and their feedback on climate and atmosphere circulation, and to improve regional and global energy balance/atmosphere circulation models. 
Acquisition of new information on high altitude areas may also contribute to the study of alpine hydrology and to asses the fresh water resources more precisely, particularly in those regions where water supply demand is projected to rise continuously, but where seasonal variability of snow cover, glaciers and permafrost are strongly affected by global warming and rapid changing climate.