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WEATHER CLIMATE WATER8255-1397000World Meteorological OrganizationEXECUTIVE COUNCILSeventy-Second Session28 September to 2 October 2020, VideoconferenceEC-72/INF. 2.5(3)Submitted by:Scientific Advisory Panel Chair 16.IX.2020REPORT BY THE CHAIR OF THE SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY PANELIntroductionThe Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) was established in 2019 by Resolution 10 (Cg-18) to be the scientific advisory body of the Organization, drawing up opinions and making recommendations to Congress and to the Executive Council on matters concerning WMO research strategies and the optimal scientific directions to support the evolution of its mandate in weather, climate, water and related environmental and social sciences.SAP provides forward-looking strategic advice on emerging challenges and opportunities to WMO as a whole, inspiring the main bodies of the organization in exploring new technological and scientific topics. The two WMO Technical Commissions and the Research Board can benefit from the SAP advice for designing and implementing innovative projects and activities for the benefit of WMO Members. SAP identified four high-level directions to guide WMO vision for the next 20 years and beyond:(1)Customized impact-based forecasts and warnings when and where it counts, more localized, timely and better information for cities and regional areas;(2)Reliable and trusted forecasts - Enhanced assimilation of observations for more accurate predictions;(3)An Earth system prediction capability - Fully integrated atmosphere, ocean, sea-ice and hydrology models;(4)Seamless weather and climate insights - Historical observations and predictions, from minutes to decades.Within these, SAP recognizes the importance of engaging effectively, all regions of WMO in the new technological and scientific directions identified for global sustainability.The membership of the SAP has been established following the guidance of Resolution 10 (Cg18): Chair: Gilbert Brunet, Australia; Vice-Chair: Opha Pauline Dube, Botswana; Members: Stephen Belcher, United Kingdom; Carlos A. Nobre, Brazil; Laban A. Ogallo, Kenya; Netatua Pelesikoti, Tonga; Vladimir M. Kattsov, Russian Federation; Julia Slingo, United Kingdom; Toshio Koike, Japan; Thomas Stocker, Switzerland; Markku T. Kulmala, Finland; Carolina Vera, Argentina; Dennis P. Lettenmaier, United States of America; Rucong YU, China; Amanda Lynch, United States of America.SAP Vision Statement for WMOThe main purpose of the SAP is to draw up recommendations and suggestions to the Executive Council and to the Congress on matters that are of relevance to the WMO research strategies. The WMO Strategic Plan sets out long-term goals for 2030 horizon and strategic objectives. By 2030, we see a world where all nations, especially the most vulnerable, are more resilient to the socioeconomic consequences of high-impact weather, climate, water and other environmental events; and underpin their sustainable development through the best possible services, whether over land, at sea or in the air.Weather-climate-water science has achieved immense progress during the last few decades, driven by research, by the development of an increasingly sophisticated infrastructure such as telecommunications, computational and observational systems, and by the expectations of users of Earth-system information. Here the Earth-system encompasses the atmosphere and its chemical composition, the oceans, land/sea-ice and other cryosphere components as well as the land surface, including surface hydrology and wetlands, lakes and human activities. On short time scales, it includes phenomena that result from the interaction between one or more components, such as ocean waves and storm surges. On longer time scales for climate applications, it includes the terrestrial and ocean ecosystems, the carbon and nitrogen cycles and slowly varying cryosphere components like the large continental ice sheets and permafrost.Predictive skill for numerical weather prediction now extends in some cases beyond ten days, with an increasing capability to give many days early warning of severe weather events. At shorter lead times more detailed forecasts of the structure and timing of weather-related hazards can be provided. The concomitant development of ensemble methods now routinely provides essential information on the probability of specific events, a key input in numerous weather and climate decision-making systems. Partly because of these advances, the needs of the users have simultaneously diversified, and now encompass “environmental” prediction products, such as air quality or hydrological weather and climate predictions.This progress has been possible because of the research and technical developments carried out in operational centres, academic institutes, private sector, by surface and spaced-base observational data providers and in the computing industry. Over the last decades several major WMO international research programmes have been critical in fostering the necessary collaboration. In particular, the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP), World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and the Global Atmospheric Watch (GAW) have been major collaborative effort to accelerate this progress. The future scientific challenges of WMO could demand the creation of new programmes or working groups. As the weather-climate-water science is advancing more critical questions are arising such as about future climate projections, the possible sources of predictability on weekly, monthly and longer time-scales; seamless prediction from minutes to months; optimal use of local and global observing capabilities and the effective utilization of massively-parallel supercomputers. The science is primed for a step forward informed by the realization that major socioeconomic benefits can be leveraged from better understanding of the Earth-system's weather and climate. Consequently, the time is right to examine the rapidly changing scientific and socioeconomic drivers of weather-climate-water science and to identify the most important scientific challenges facing WMO in the next two decades. Hence, SAP is to be expected to develop and initiate innovative and novel scientific directions that will support the development of WMO mandate in the fields of weather, climate, water, environmental and social sciences. SAP is the main think tank of the WMO to ensure it remains an organization with strong vision to deliver to sustainability.Progress so farFor this purpose, during the virtual SAP meeting (4 and 5 June 2020), the SAP members decided to move forward by collecting visionary and revolutionary scientific topics for the WMO in the time frame 2025-2040. Over the past months, the SAP members in collaboration and interaction with the WMO Secretariat engaged in further brainstorming on potential game changing scientific advances and visions informed by current needs and anticipated future direction of society that now forms the zero-order draft with SAP vision statement for WMO. During the SAP online meeting on 28 August 2020, the members discussed the content document and decided on the way forward.The SAP is currently considering four big science challenges to deliver the future WMO vision. These challenges include:(1)Earth-system's weather and climate prediction and insight;(2)Future challenges of the global observing network;(3)Environmental services based on science for all;(4)Global innovation and knowledge: toward extensive scientific and socio-economic partnership and cooperation.The discussion on the content of the four challenges are ongoing, SAP members are brainstorming, working on cross-cutting issues, and will appoint lead authors and contributing authors. Staff from the WMO Secretariat will also provide their visions and input to the four challenges. As an example, the potential outline for challenge 1 is given below. SAP will also work towards a better link between academia/research institutions, the private sector and WMO. To engage the science community to help WMO achieve its goals, the needs of scientists to have relevant fund for research must be considered. Recognizing that WMO priorities do not always feature into research council thinking and that we do not have the capacity to move forward with some of the major challenges alone, the SAP has to have very high on its agenda for the promotion of future scientific challenges to encourage opportunities for research funding aligned with WMO goals.The first challenge, Earth-system's weather and climate prediction and insight comprises novel thoughts, ideas and ways toward enhancing ability to predict and understand manifestation of all forms of weather-climate-water processes at multiple scales and their incorporation into human systems. This will be key to WMO contribution to resilience building and global sustainability. Central to this is meeting user requirements and needs: (1)For improvements in the accuracy, precision, lead-time, and utilization of weather-climate-water predictions to take full advantage of opportunities while timely mitigating events that have a potential for significant negative socio-economic impact; (2)For better climate scenarios for provision of reliable and accurate information at multiple spatial and temporal scales for long term planning. This will require novel approaches and effective integration of the needs of the users throughout the value chain of predictions and forecasts. Weather-climate-water prediction systems have improved remarkably in recent years despite challenges with variables such as precipitation. Further gaps persist between what is delivered and the expectations of different users/stakeholders, for instance, a scale mismatch with spatial and temporal planning scales for policy needs. As the quality of modern Numerical Earth-system Weather-to-Climate Prediction (NEWP) systems and their climate applications increases more components of the Earth-system which include atmosphere and its chemical composition, the oceans, land/sea-ice and other cryosphere components as well as the land surface, including surface hydrology and wetlands, lakes and human activities will need to be considered. Geophysical sub-systems coupled to the atmosphere need to be better simulated now than ever before to provide new sector specific forecast variables, some at fine scales (e.g. river flow and sea ice) with undeniable socio-economic benefits.____________ ................
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