TWP2 - STRATEGY FOR OBSERVATIONAL STUDIES : INSTRUMENTATION, ANALYSIS, DISSEMINATION

Responsable : Martial Haeffelin, IPSL

Objectifs et stratégie

Observations for monitoring climate changes require long data sets. Available series of observations are strongly inhomogeneous in nature, length, observed parameters, location, sampling, resolution, requiring adjustments, corrections … and always correspond to a partial view of the climate systems. One strategy for taking advantage of these measurements consists in comparing them with numerical simulation outputs that give a more global context. Another strategy consists in collecting simultaneously many different types of data to better understood processes. Finally innovative instruments and methods are required to access new measurements that help to characterize climate changes and constrain models. Preliminary tasks consist then in identifying, collecting, qualifying, correcting, coupling, and formatting these series to insure a better use of these data with models. The attribution to climate changes on long-term series of measurements as well as numerical simulations requires both sophisticated statistical analyses. The L-IPSL LABEX propose to complement and insure a better coordination with the thematic national data centers like ETHER or ICARE respectively for atmospheric and aerosol composition. IPSL teams already collect a lot of data that are not easy to use for evaluate models. IPSL has setup the ESPRI structure for coordinating data handling for both observations and model outputs (Prodiguer-CMIP5 project). The expertise on innovative techniques can be further increase with a better coordination across the LABEX partners.

One of the main goals will be to provide accurate reference observations available for direct observations with numerical models and associated statistical analyses. For such purpose, new innovative measurements and data series analyses will be developed. One example is the use of water isotopes to compare model outputs with field measurement and/or paleo-proxies through proxy-forward models.