Sea Technology

JAN 2018

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www.sea-technology.com January 2018 | ST 29 is the development of improved predictive capability of climate and climate change for the benefit of society. During 2017, CLIVAR developed a new Science Plan in consultation with its wider community. The plan was to be finalized by the end of 2017 and will be updated on a continued basis to take into account newly emerging challenges and demands from the science community and nations worldwide. To achieve its objectives, CLIVAR coordinates interna- tional research in climate and ocean science, facilitating cooperation among national and multinational efforts, thereby enabling global climate research beyond indi- vidual regional and institutional capabilities. Through its panels, research foci, workshops, summer schools and conferences, the CLIVAR project continues to bring to- gether researchers from all over the world to coordinate efforts required to understand the dynamics of the cou- pled ocean-atmosphere system and to identify processes responsible for climate variability, change and predict- ability. Conference on Regional Sea Level Changes, Coastal Impacts After the success of the CLIVAR Open Science Con- ference (OSC) in Qingdao, China, September 2016, with the participation of more than 600 scientists from 47 countries, CLIVAR was involved in the organization of another important scientific event. WCRP has established the theme "Regional Sea Level Change and Coastal Impacts" as one of its crosscutting "Grand Challenge" (GC) science questions. The GC Sea Level has designed and developed an integrated interdis- ciplinary program on sea level research ranging from the global to regional to coastal scales. Within this frame, WCRP, jointly with the Intergovernmental Oceanograph- ic Commission of UNESCO, organized a five-day inter- national conference on sea level research July 2017 at Columbia University in New York. The conference (www.sealevel2017.org) attempted to link large-scale sea level information to coastal areas, address societal implications of those changes to coastal communities, and discuss feedback of societal actions on coastal sea level. More than 350 participants from 42 nations attended the event, after which they issued a conference statement recognizing that sea level rise has accelerated over the past 100 years due to global warm- ing. Conference participants, which included natural scientists, social scientists, coastal engineers, managers and planners, discussed evidence indicating that sea lev- el rise represents a major challenge for coastal societies. They closed the conference statement by expressing that: "In summary, the present state of sea-level science provides unambiguous evidence that sea level is rising and that the increase will continue to accelerate with un- mitigated emissions. This requires that scientists closely collaborate with the stakeholder community to develop plans for responding to sea-level change affecting their coasts and to implement adequate adaptation measures. Without urgent and significant mitigating action to com- bat climate change continued greenhouse gas emissions The feasibility of such an operational coastal service will be assessed by CEASELESS on three levels: scien- tific (project partners), technical (project users) and op- erational (Copernicus providers). This approach can en- hance the CMEMS coastal dimension and be integrated into the working protocols of regular users. The general aim of CEASELESS is, thus, to achieve a high-grade analysis of coastal sea dynamics based on a superior level of information provided by Sentinel data, combined with in-situ coastal observations, and a greater wealth of processes in met-ocean numerical models that consider explicitly the land boundary condition (includ- ing the linkage to the emerged coast). This will support an enhancement of the Copernicus coastal dimension that is timely and commensurate with the challenges faced by vulnerable coastal systems, con- tributing to create a weather-smart society and a variety of weather-based services. ST Review&Forecast; Working Together for Improved Climate and Ocean Research By Dr. Jose Santos Executive Director International CLIVAR Project Office C LIVAR (Climate and Ocean: Variability, Pre- dictability and Change) is the World Climate Research Programme's (WCRP) core project on climate and the ocean, and for more than 26 years it has been addressing key questions on climate variability, predictability and change. Finding answers to these questions requires interna- tional coordination that takes into account the ongoing changes in the climate system, as well as an evolving po- litical framework dealing with these changes. During its existence, CLIVAR has provided fundamental knowledge about the characteristics and dynamics of mechanisms of variability in the coupled climate system. New CLIVAR Science Plan CLIVAR's science is aligned and organized around three overarching science questions with long-lasting impacts: What are the mechanisms of climate variabili- ty, climate change and climate sensitivity; which are the fundamental processes that need to be properly repre- sented in climate models; and how predictable is the cli- mate on different time and space scales? These questions are longstanding challenges that mo- tivated CLIVAR initially, and while substantial progress has been made, important questions remain, along with newly emerging ones. One of the expected outcomes of CLIVAR research

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