Document Ref.: D6.1Science Exploitation Report Draft v0.2CMUG Deliverable Number: D6.1Due date: April 2015Submission date: June 2015Version: 0.2

Climate Modelling User Group

Deliverable 6.1

Scientific Exploitation Report

Centres providing input: MOHC

Version Date Comment0.2 10 June 2015 First draft for ESA comment

Contents

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Document Ref.: D6.1Science Exploitation Report Draft v0.2CMUG Deliverable Number: D6.1Due date: April 2015Submission date: June 2015Version: 0.2

1 Introduction 3

2 Outreach and engagement 4

2.1 Key outreach channels and activities 4

2.2 CMUG website 5

2.3 CMUG data forum 7

2.4 Meetings and workshops 10

2.5 Documents and publications 11

2.6 Other reports 11

Annex A 12

- Meetings attended by CMUG 13

- Publications with CMUG input and results 14

- Report of CMUG Integration Meetings 3 and 4 15

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CMUG Scientific Exploitation Report

1 Introduction

The CMUG project has been running since 2012 and includes outreach and engagement activities for an audience including the climate research community (including reanalysis, climate impact studies and climate modelling), international coordinating bodies, scientific press, the general public and others with a general interest in the Earth climate system. This report provides a record of these activities and their outcomes/success, and supplements CMUG deliverables 4.2 and 4.3 (Scientific Exploitation Report, and Promotion Package, respectively). The CMUG has delivered outreach and engagement activities as described the outreach plans for Phase 1 (D4.1 v2, below) and Phase 2 (D6.1 v1).

5. Plans for outreach (from Phase 1 D4.1 Scientific Exploitation Plan v2)The following channels are being exploited to make the users aware of the new CCI CDRs.

1. Presentations on the planned and sample ESA CCI datasets at meetings during phase 1 of the CCI.

2. Continued development of the CMUG web site to make the community aware of the CCI datasets planned and available.

3. Set up a CMUG newsgroup where important announcements about the CCI datasets are sent out to registered users when CCI datasets become available.

4. High level awareness of the CMUG activities at the CMUG partner institutes.5. Working level interactions with key scientists in climate modelling and reanalysis centres through

the scientists in the CMUG institutes and invitations to CCI/CMUG meetings.6. Lobby to include CCI datasets in appropriate IPCC reviews, CMUG partners contribute to the IPCC

reviews and are in a good position to promote this.7. Ensure some of the CCI datasets are available from the Obs4MIPS site.8. Link with GCOS activities through GCOS project office and AOPC.9. Link with relevant EU projects which require CCI data as input. The CMUG has a wide involvement

with such projects (e.g. IS-ENES, CHARMe, Core-CLIMAX, SPECS, …)10. Attendance at key climate modelling, reanalysis and satellite data meetings by CMUG staff to

promote the CCI datasets (e.g. CMIP5, WCRP Science conference, EUMETSAT Meteorological Satellite Conference, etc)

11. Give inputs to the WCRP GEWEX scientific steering group and sub-groups (e.g. WDAP, WGCM) as appropriate.

12. Publication of article in Bulletin of American Meteorological Society or similar.13. Co-ordinate outreach with individual CCI projects to ensure consistent message is given14. Advertise early use of CCI datasets in CMUG partner institutes.15. Organise a workshop to promote and inform users about the available CCI datasets. Invite key

scientists to attend and offer them travel and subsistence if necessary. 16. By working with the CCI projects ensure that the CDRs (and associated observation operators) are

easy to access and ingest in commonly used formats. In addition their error characteristics must be provided along with the datasets. Providing the datasets on the Earth System Grid will be a key objective.

17. Links to EUMETSAT’s proposed activities on climate monitoring – need to ensure complementarity and avoid any duplication of effort, etc.

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2 Outreach and engagement

2.1 Key outreach channels and activities

CMUG outreach and engagement activities to the climate modelling and reanalysis communities (the CMC) and others (international bodies, scientific press, and the general public) were active throughout the Phase 1 and have become more focused in Phase 2 now that the ECV datasets are available and have been assessed by CMUG and other research groups.

The main source of communication to audiences of interest outside the CCI is the project website (Figure 1) and the newly created data forum. These sites provide outreach material (newsletters, science summary documents, presentations, deliverables, posters, flyers etc.) as well as information about past and future meetings with a significant CMUG input. CMUG website outreach channels and their impact are described in section 2.1.

CMUG attendance at national and international climate research events (conferences, unions, symposia, etc.) are another key channel through which information about the CCI reaches the scientific community and a wider set of stakeholders (scientific press, policymakers, ‘interested’ public). This work is supported by a range of media, (oral presentations, poster sessions, flyers, newsletters) including the recently produced CCI visualisations. Activity in this arena, and its outcomes are described in section 2.2

The last key channel through which CMUG research results are disseminated is via papers in peer-reviewed journals, and articles in programme bulletins. This is a specialist route as its reach is only to the climate science research community and the scientific press. Activity in this arena, and its outcomes are described in section 2.4

Formal communication on CMUG outreach and engagement activities has been recorded in monthly and quarterly management reports and presented at CMUG management meetings and annual progress meetings with ESA.

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2.2 CMUG website

The CCI CMUG website (Figure 1) has been kept up to date with project deliverables, descriptions of scientific exploitation of CCI data, media outputs, and forthcoming events. The CMC has been kept informed of CMUG news via electronic newsletters and information emails (for example giving notice of CMUG presentations at international conferences).

The website provides latest news on forthcoming meetings and events. It includes pages for CMUG deliverables, project outputs, forthcoming events, posters, flyers, and significant reports and presentations. It also includes links to the ESA CCI programme, individual ECV pages, and partner organisations. The website uses a common style with other CCI websites for easy navigation by users, and is updated on a weekly basis. In Phase 2 the CMUG website has been supplemented by the CMUG data forum which aims to provide an online discussion and information dissemination forum for the CCI. Such material disseminated through the forum includes short summaries of CMUG assessments of individual ECV datasets, key information about CCI datasets, a blog, and if there is sufficient interest a discussion forum.

Figure 1: CCI CMUG front page screenshot (June 2015).

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Website traffic: A new apache (AWStats) system was put in place in April 2015 recording the number of visits (to CMUG addresses) by visitors’ country, referrals etc. Early statistics (Figure 2 and Table 1) suggest that most traffic appears to be from China, followed by European countries. The statistics will be more valuable over a longer accumulation period.

Figure 2: CMUG website traffic by month.

Country Pages Bandwidth MB

China 3354 6033Germany 168 507

Other European countries 107 329

United States 58 185Belgium 64 103

Great Britain 215 102Netherlands 18 21

Sweden 27 18Unknown 371 164

Other 677 1570Total 5059 9031

Table 1: CMUG_CCI website traffic May 2015 by country.

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Google Analytics was added on 1st May which provides an indicator of the number of visits and referrals etc. and show most (72%) traffic is new visitors (Figure 3).

Figure 3: ESA-CCI website traffic by new and returning visitor.

2.3 CMUG data forum

A data forum was set up to provide access to key CCI CMUG data-sets, and a forum for CCI data users to interact and record user experience. The web page went live in September 2014, and includes links to individual CMUG-CCI web pages, validation documents, data products and metadata (Figure 4). The Data Forum will complement the 3-year CCI Open Data Portal which commenced on May 1st by providing an open forum for user discussion and feedback on CCI datasets. 

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Figure 4: Screenshot from CCI CMUG Data Forum.

Forum visitor statistics (Figure 5) show a total of over 5600 hits in 2015. Visits increased steadily from September last year with the number of visitors and the quantity of data downloaded peaking in February this year. Traffic has been steady in March & April.

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Figure 5: CMUG data forum visitor statistics by month.

Most hits were from the UK, followed by Ukraine, Netherlands and France (Figure 6). Detailed daily and annual reports on site usage are also available by page visited, data downloaded, referrals from other sites, and individual user url.

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Figure 6: Forum visits by country.

2.4 Meetings & Workshops

CMUG has organised or participated in a large range of significant meetings and workshops, and for convenience these are listed in chronological order in Annex A.

Most recently, the 5th Integration meeting was held on 26-28 May 2015 in Norrkoping, Sweden. The aims of the integration meeting were to review CCI progress and current status, to assess the CCI data products, and steer Phase 2 technical direction. The meeting was attended by 65 scientists, and the outputs include detailed scientific presentations which are available on the CMUG website. Details of this and previous integration meetings are included in Annexe A.

There are annually a number of international climate conferences (e.g. EGU, AGU, EC funded project meetings) at which science research is presented and discussed. CMUG scientists have attended and presented at these, and other public events and conferences with a climate or Earth observation theme, for example the Darmstadt Climate Symposium (13-17 Oct 2014) where CMUG science lead Roger Saunders (Met Office) co-chaired the CCI Session, and the SPECS (FP7 project) general assembly where CMUG results were presented by Alex Loew.

International coordinating bodies and programmes (WMO, WCRP, GRUAN, WOAP, EUMETSAT) hold regular meetings where CMUG scientists have presented programme information and results, either as members of these bodies, or by invitation as experts. CMUG scientists also gave presentations about the programme to international research projects which will have an interest in the CCI, for example Obs4MIPs and IS-ENES2 in 2014.

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CMUG attended technical workshops on Uncertainty in Exeter (Nov 2014), and the ESMValTool Workshop at LMU-München in March 2015. These workshops enabled CMUG scientists to share expertise and steer further technical developments e.g. for the ESMValTool to handle ESA CCI datasets and to produce performance metrics.

2.5 Documents and publications

The following documents for use in outreach and scientific engagement have been produced over the last 2 years:

CMUG newsletters (Sep 2013, June 2015) User Requirements Report (December 2014) Scientific Impacts Report (April 2015) Technical Report on Product Assessment (June 2015) Data Quality Assessment Report (June 2014) Technical Note on Obs4MIPs

The number of peer reviewed journal articles has increased from 30 to nearly 200 since 2012, demonstrating the significant contribution being made by CCI-CMUG datasets to climate science. They include diverse papers on remote-sensing, satellite observations and climate science from a wide range of institutions and countries. Publications since 2013 are listed in Annex A.

2.6 Other reports

In the course of the CMUG project other documents were generated with a specific role or audience in mind. These are communication products which are not formal deliverables, and thus not submitted to ESA for contractual acceptance. This document provides an archive for such material. These documents (meeting reports, publications, etc) are found in Annex A.

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Annex A

Contents

- Meetings attended by CMUG

- CMUG Peer reviewed publications since 2013

- Details of CMUG Integration Meeting 4 & 5

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Meetings attended by CMUGThis list describes the CCI programme and external science meetings attended by CMUG since August 2013 (when outreach activities were last reported) to which there was a contribution by the CMUG team. It excludes CCI ECV project meetings which are part of the CCI and are also attended by CMUG team members as they are concerned more with science research than outreach.

Date Meeting Location Communications action by CMUG

201529 Sep-1 Oct 2015

CCI Colocation 6 ESRIN, Italy CCI project meeting

21-25 Sept 2015

EUMETSAT Met Satellite Conference Toulouse, France

Abstract accepted

4-7 Aug 2015 NOAA CDR-CCI Asheville, USA CCI-NOAA science meeting13-15 Jul 2015 UK Space Conference Liverpool, UK Presentation of CCI and CMUG

results26-28 May 2015

CMUG 5th integration meeting SMHI, Sweden CCI project meeting

11-May-15 MACC-III Copernicus User Workshop UNICEF, Rome

CMUG Participation

3-4 Mar2015 ESMVal workshop Munich CMUG Participation

201418-20 Nov 2014 SST user workshop on uncertainties Exeter, UK CMUG participation

20-22 Oct 2014 CCI Colocation 5 ESRIN CCI project meeting

13-17 Oct 2014 EUMETSAT climate research from space

Darmstadt CMUG session

13-Jun-14 CCI Press event at the Royal Society London, UK CMUG participation

2-4 June 2014 CMUG Fourth integration meeting Exeter, UK CCI project meeting

12-13 May 2014

IS-ENES2 infrastructure for Earth System Models

De Bilt, Netherlands

CMUG interaction

29 April-3 May 2014

Obs4MIPs California CMUG presentation

27 April-2 May 2014

EGU Vienna CMUG participation

4-6 Feb 2014 CCI Colocation 4 ESRIN CCI project meeting

201315-16 Oct 2013 SPECS General Assembly Netherlands CMUG presentation

16-20 Sept 2013

EUMETSAT and American Met. Soc Vienna CMUG presentation

10-11 Sept 2013

ESA Living Planet Edinburgh CMUG presentation

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CMUG Peer reviewed publications since 2013

Ford, D. A., K. P. Edwards, D. Lea, R. M. Barciela, M. J. Martin, and J. Demaria: Assimilating GlobColour ocean colour data into a pre-operational physical-biogeochemical model Ocean Sci. Discuss., 9, 687-744, 2012.

Hollmann, R., Merchant, C. J., Saunders, R., Downy, C., Buchwitz, M., Cazenave, A., … Wagner, W. (2013). The ESA Climate Change Initiative: satellite data records for essential climate variables. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 130313072241002. doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00254.1

Lean, K. and R. Saunders, 2013: Validation of the ATSR Re-processing for Climate (ARC) dataset using data from drifting buoys and a three-way error analysis. Journal of Climate.

Loew, A. (2013). Terrestrial satellite records for climate studies: how long is long enough? A test case for the Sahel. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 1–14. doi:10.1007/s00704-013-0880-6. http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/17/3523/2013/hess-17-3523-2013.html

Loew, A., Stacke, T., Dorigo, W., de Jeu, R., & Hagemann, S. (2013). Potential and limitations of multidecadal satellite soil moisture observations for selected climate model evaluation studies. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 17(9), 3523–3542. doi:10.5194/hess-17-3523-2013

Merchant, C. J., Embury, O., Rayner, N. A., Berry, D. I., Corlett, G. K., Lean, K., … Saunders, R. (2012). A 20 year independent record of sea surface temperature for climate from Along-Track Scanning Radiometers. Journal of Geophysical Research, 117(C12), C12013. doi:10.1029/2012JC008400

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4th & 5th CCI CMUG Project Integration Meetings

The 4th CCI CMUG Project Integration Meeting was held 2-3 June 2014 at the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, UK. The meeting showcased the gridded climate observation datasets produced in Phase 1 of the CCI programme and demonstrated their usefulness to the climate modelling, reanalysis and climate research communities.  Keynote presentations were given by Julia Slingo (Chief Scientist, Met Office), Pietro Ceccato (IRI, University of Columbia), Michael Zemp (Dir.World Glacier Monitoring Service, University of Zurich), Francisco Doblas Reyes (Head of Climate Forecasting at IC3), and Chris Jones, Head of Earth System and Mitigation Science at the Met Office. The 5th Project Integration Meeting was held on 26-28th May at SMHI in Sweden. It was attended by 64 scientists and examined the current gridded climate observation datasets of the CCI programme, their validation by the CMUG climate modelling teams, their application in climate research, and their potential use in Copernicus Climate Change Services. It included keynote presentations by Peter Thorne (Maynooth University), Malcolm Roberts (Met Office), and Erik Kjellström (SMHI). The meeting explored current applications of CCI data, the ECV data quality assessment, and data quality for climate data services (e.g. GAIA-CLIM, FIDUCIO, CORE-CLIMAX and the ESA Data Portal). Presentations are on the CMUG website.

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