Planned and potential contribution to the GEWEX Roadmap and CEOP objectives
The HE initiative will contribute to certain specific GEWEX Roadmap objectives, particularly:
- contribute to improving/ensuring the quality of data collected using commercially available instrumentation which has not been adapted for use in extreme conditions. (GEWEX obj. #1);
- careful consideration will be given to the way the inhomogeneous landscape of high elevation areas could influence data representativeness. (GEWEX obj. #1);
- data from the high elevation reference stations will contribute to improving regional monsoon studies (Africa, South America, North America, Asian/Australian) (GEWEX obj. #1);
- improved high resolution simulations of weather events in mountain areas may benefit climate studies and regional climate prediction (GEWEX obj. #2, 3);
- monitoring strategies foreseeing a high-tech approach will be applied when possible to guarantee automatic measurements with the lowest possible percentage of data loss (GEWEX obj. #4);
- contribute to capacity buildings in developing countries to facilitate and promote use of monitoring information by and to the benefit of local populations (GEWEX obj. #4);
- execution of interdisciplinary scientific programs at high elevations aimed at improving our understanding of upper troposphere behavior in relation to global changes (GEWEX obj. #4);
- contribute to the management of local environment: early warning information; long-term forecast, etc. (GEWEX obj. #4);demonstrate the benefits of hydro-meteorological predictions in water resources management (GEWEX obj. #4).
Understanding and prediction of high elevation water and energy cycles is the main component of the CEOP studies. HE thus seeks to make the following contributions to the CEOP strategic objectives:
- detecting main factors affecting the water and energy cycles and study their seasonal-to-decadal trends variability and change at high elevations on a local and global scale (CEOP obj. #1);
- implementing a high quality observational database to provide high quality data sets with a focus on the water cycle and energy budget to be used in climate system analysis and model development and evaluation (CEOP obj. #1);
- furthering the knowledge of water and energy cycle impacts on high elevation environments at different levels and determining, understanding and predicting how climate change impinges on different subsystems such as hydrology, cryosphere, geomorphology, ecosystems, biodiversity, natural hazards, human livelihoods, etc., both on a local and regional scale (CEOP obj. #2);
- providing important information for the study of natural and anthropogenic aerosol impacts on climate and hydro-geological cycle and to understand upper troposphere behaviours in relation to global change (CEOP obj. #2);
- promoting high-resolution numerical simulations over complex terrain and improving the development of models specific for high elevation environments to increase the forecast capability of extreme weather events in high elevation areas and improve the management of local environment and water resources (CEOP obj. #3, 4).
We expect that the HE data will become a recognized part of the CEOP data archive and eventually be incorporated within the GEOSS data center.
