The RHPs are organized and funded by national organizations and are or have the potential of satisfying the
GEWEX technical and scientific criteria. The current group of 8 GEWEX RHPs include some of the original or ancestors of the original GEWEX Continental
Scale Experiments (CSEs) established in 1994 (BALTEX,GCIP/GAPP/CPPA,
LBA, GAME/MAHASRI) as well as some newer ones (MDB,LPB,
AMMA, NEESPI).
Besides focusing on their own regional GEWEX hydroclimate goals, the RHPs are making a significant contribution
to CEOP through their contribution of reference site, model and satellite data.
African Monsoon Multidiscplinary Analysis (AMMA)
http://www.amma-international.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=1
https://www.amma-eu.org/
Representative: Amadou Gaye (atgaye@ucad.sn)
The dramatic change from the abundant rainfall in the 1950s and 60s to much drier conditions from the 70s to
the 90s over the whole of West Africa was the strongest trend in rainfall on the planet of the 20th century. Marked inter-annual variations in recent decades
have resulted in extremely dry years with devastating environmental and socio-economic impacts.
It is AMMA's aim to provide the African decision makers with improved assessments of rainfall changes which are likely to occur during
the 21st century due to natural fluctuations and as a result of anticipated global climate change. An essential step in that direction is to
improve the ability to forecast the weather and climate in the West African region.
Based on a French initiative, AMMA was built by an international scientific group and is currently funded by a
large number of agencies, especially from France, UK, US and Africa. It has been the beneficiary of a major financial contribution from the European Community’s
Sixth Framework Research Programme.
AMMA has three main goals:
- To ensure that the multidisciplinary research carried out in AMMA is effectively integrated with prediction and decision making activity.
- To provide the underpinning science that relates variability of the West African Monsoon (WAM) to issues of health, water resources, food
security and demography for West African nations and defining and implementing relevant monitoring and prediction strategies.
- To improve our understanding of the West African Monsoon and its influence on the physical, chemical and
biological environment, regionally and globally.
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BALTic sea EXperiment (BALTEX)
http://www.baltex-research.eu/
Representative: Hans-Joerg Isemer (hans-joerg.isemer@gkss.de)
The Baltic Sea Experiment was established as a regional research programme and a contribution to GEWEX in 1993 and 1994. BALTEX Phase I was concluded in 2002
followed by Phase II of the programme with revised and extended science objectives. The research focus of BALTEX has primarily been on the hydrological
cycle and the exchange of energy between the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth, because they control and regulate the climate in a fundamental manner.
BALTEX Phase II extends the scope of research to regional climate change, water management and air and water quality.
The present status of BALTEX may best be described as an international, interdisciplinary partner network across more than 10 countries. BALTEX has no
major central funding. At present, the individual project funding relies heavily on institutions' resources, while major funding at the national or international
levels is minor.
The BALTEX Phase II (2003 - 2012) has the following major goals and objectives:
- Better understanding of the energy and water cycles over the Baltic Sea basin.
- Analysis of climate variability and change since 1800, and provision of regional climate projections over the Baltic Sea basin for the 21st century.
- Provision of improved tools for water management, with an emphasis on more accurate forecasts of extreme events and long-term changes.
- Gradual extension of BALTEX methodologies to air and water quality studies.
- Strengthened interaction with decision-makers, with emphasis on global change impact assessments.
- Education and outreach at the international level.
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Climate Prediction Program for the Americas (CPPA)
http://www.climate.noaa.gov/cpo_pa/cppa/
Representative: Jin Huang (jin.huang@noaa.gov)
The Climate Prediction Program for the Americas is a competitive research program to improve operational intraseasonal to interannual climate prediction and the
hydrological applications. It is an integrated program that combines the former GEWEX/GAPP and CLIVAR Pan American Climate Studies (PACS). CPPA is solely
sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office.
CPPA has four main scientific objectives:
- To quantify the sources and limits of predictability of climate variations on intra-seasonal to interannual time scale.
- To improve predictive understanding and model simulations of ocean,
atmosphere and land-surface processes, including the ability to quantify uncertainty.
- To advance NOAA’s operational climate forecasts, monitoring, and analysis systems by transferring research to operation.
- To develop climate-based hydrologic forecasting capabilities for decision support and water resource applications.
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Large scale Biosphere-atmosphere experiment in Amazonia (LBA)
http://lba.cptec.inpe.br/lba/?lg=eng
Representative: Jair Maia (jairmaia@inpa.gov.br)
The Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia is an international research initiative led by Brazil. LBA is designed to create the new knowledge
needed to understand the climatological, ecological, biogeochemical, and hydrological functioning of Amazonia, the impact of land use change on these
functions, and the interactions between Amazonia and the Earth system. LBA is primarily funded by the Brazilian Government (Science and Technology Ministry).
The program is centered on two key questions:
- How does Amazonia currently function as a regional entity?
- How will changes in land use and climate affect the biological, chemical, and physical functions of
Amazonia, including the sustainability of development in the region and the influence of Amazonia on global climate?
The Hydrology component will consider issues related to both the quantity and the chemistry of water in the
Amazon Basin. The stores and fluxes of water, and the controls on movement of water in soils and in streams, and the associated transport of constituents,
will be determined for a nested suite of catchments representing a range of land use intensities.
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La Plata Basin (LPB)
http://www.eol.ucar.edu/projects/lpb/
Representative: Hugo Berbery (berbery@atmos.umd.edu)
The La Plata Basin is an International Project that that has been endorsed by GEWEX and CLIVAR. It aims
to improve the predictive skill of the hydroclimate system of that South American basin. It also seeks to establish the possible impacts of regional and
global climate change on the water resources of the region. The La Plata basin is highly vulnerable to floods, a fact that has been gradually worsened due to
the notable positive trends in precipitation and streamflow. LPB is working with several organizations and agencies to promote its agenda and bring awareness of
activities of high impact to the regional community.
The fundamental issues to be addressed in LPB can be summarized in three main questions:
- What climatological and hydrological factors determine the frequency of occurrence and spatial extent of floods and droughts?
- How predictable is the regional weather and climate variability and how predictable are their impacts on the hydrological, agricultural and social
systems of the basin?
- What are the impacts of global climate change and land use change on regional weather, climate, hydrology and agriculture?
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Monsoon Asian Hydro-Atmosphere Scientific Research and Prediction Initiative (MAHASRI)
http://mahasri.cr.chiba-u.ac.jp/index_e.html
Representative: Jun Matsumoto (jun@eps.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp)
The Monsoon Asian Hydro-Atmosphere Scientific Research and Prediction Initiative (MAHASRI) is the successor of the former GEWEX Asian Monsoon Experiment (GAME),
but also includes several new aspects like ocean-atmosphere interaction, aerosols, winter monsoon, application to the society, and capacity building. MAHASRI was approved by the
GEWEX SSG in January 2006.
MAHASRI involves a number of participating organizations including many governmental agencies, universities
and institutes from various countries of Asia. Among them, the Japan Agency for
Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) will be a key institute. MAHASRI
is a coordinated project of projects that are funded by many funding sources in
Japan, China, India, Thailand, and other Asian countries.
The objective of the MAHASRI is “to develop a hydro-meteorological prediction
system, particularly with the time scale up to a season, through the better scientific understanding of
Asian monsoon variability" with the following activities:
- Determine the predictability and key components of Asian monsoon variability
with a time scale up to a season for the development of a hydro-meteorological prediction system.
- Develop a real-time monitoring capability for hydro-meteorological observation.
- Develop an integrated hydro-meteorological database including data-rescue.
- Examine and improve hydro-meteorological models in some specific river basins.
Key scientific issues are focused on:>
- Atmosphere-ocean-land interactions.
- Effect of various-scale orography on monsoon.
- Temporal interactions among diurnal, synoptic, intraseasonal and seasonal variability of Asian monsoon.
- Spatial interactions among hydro-meteorological phenomena.
- Transferability of hydrological models and parameters.
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Murray Darling Basin (MDB)
http://www.mdbc.gov.au/about
http://www.gewex.org/mdb.html
Representative: Helen Cleugh (helen.cleugh@csiro.au)
The Murray Darling Basin Water Budget Project was approved as a GEWEX CSE in January 2002,
and was initially aimed at enhancing the capability of numerical weather
prediction models to provide a real-time surface water budget over the
Murray-Darling for application by water authorities. The 2005 implementation
plan incorporated new involvement from stakeholders and the wider University
community, and identified the importance of ACCESS (Australian Community Climate
Earth System Simulator), a comprehensive ensemble prediction modeling system for
weather and climate system, to the objectives of the MDB.
Relevant objectives of the MDB project are to:
- Observe, understand and model the dynamics of the coupled water, energy and
carbon cycles of the Murray Darling Basin, a developed, semi-arid zone Basin.
- Improve predictive tools for water management, including real-time
forecasting products for use by water agencies in the Basin.
- Strengthen interaction between the climate research community and
decision-makers, to maintain a practical focus on water and climate issues
that impact both the region and the Australian continent.
- Promote education and international exchange to improve global change
science capability and innovation in Australia and worldwide.
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Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI)
http://neespi.org/
Representative: Pasha Groisman (pasha.groisman@noaa.gov)
The Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative mission is to identify
the critical science questions and establish an international program of
coordinated research on the state and dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems in
northern Eurasia and their interactions with the Earth's climate system to
enhance scientific knowledge and develop predictive capabilities to support
informed decision-making and practical applications. It focuses on issues in
Northern Eurasia that are relevant to both regional and global scientific and
decision-making communities. The Initiative has partial central funding (e.g.,
special calls/programs by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) and the Russian Academy of Sciences and investments into the Initiative
infrastructure from national and international agencies). However, more than
half of the NEESPI projects are individually funded to address specific science
question/problem that corroborates with the NEESPI Science Plan.
NEESPI’s goal is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the Northern
Eurasian terrestrial ecosystem dynamics, biogeochemical cycles, surface energy
and water cycles, and human activities and how they interact with and alter the
biosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere of the Earth. The anticipated outcome
from this program is the ability to measure, monitor, and model the processes
that will provide accurate future projections of climatic and environmental
changes in this region, which is essential because these changes and potential
changes are believed to have a substantial potential to impact the global Earth
system and the human society. On the regional (and to some extent on the global)
scales this goal corroborates well with the GEWEX mission “Development and
application of planetary Earth science, observations and models to
the problems of climate and water resources”.
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