With the advent of commercialization of atmospheric and oceanic data sets and the expansion of such efforts required by recent federal law for satellite and in situ data, US CLIVAR seeks input from the community to articulate data needs for conducting climate and weather research and educational activities that should be addressed by commercialization efforts.

The Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) directs the scientific and implementation planning of US CLIVAR, setting the program goals, implementation strategies, and research challenges to be pursued. We welcome the 2021 SSC: Gudrun Magnusdottir (Chair, UC-Irvine), Gokhan Danabasoglu (NCAR), Chidong Zhang (NOAA PMEL), Charlotte DeMott (CSU), Shane Elipot (U. Miami), Michelle Gierach (Caltech/NASA JPL), John Nielsen-Gammon (Texas A&M), Patrick Taylor (NASA Langley), and Haiyan Teng (PNNL).

The US CLIVAR Scientific Steering Committee seeks qualified individuals to serve on its three subsidiary panels. Panel members formulate science goals and implementation strategies, catalyze and coordinate activities, and work with agencies and international partners to advance the progress of the climate research community. Applications are due January 15, 2021.

Check out the 2020 Fall edition of Variations on “US East Coast Sea Level Changes and Impacts,” highlighting recent work by scientists, practitioners, and decision makers addressing challenges of coastal adaptation and resilience planning, drivers of sea level variability and change, and predicting the co-evolution of natural and human systems in coastal regions. Join the webinar on December 1 at 11am-12:30pm ET for presentations by contributing authors.

The US CLIVAR Workshop "Sea Level Hotspots from Florida to Maine: Drivers, Impacts, and Adaptation" took place in Norfolk, Virginia from April 23-25, 2019 with the main goal of bringing together the scientific community, decision makers, coastal stakeholders, and practitioners to share state-of-the-art knowledge about sea level changes along the US East Coast. This newly released workshop report provides a summary of the workshop as well as key recommendations.

We are pleased to highlight the recently published BAMS Article on “Best Practice Strategies for Process Studies Designed to Improve Climate Modeling,” authored by Janet Sprintall, Victoria Coles, Kevin Reed, Amy Butler, Greg Foltz, Hyodae Seo, and Steve Penny – current and prior members of the US CLIVAR Process Study and Model Improvement Panel – who compiled and distilled a set of practical strategies and lessons learned to help guide planning and implementation of future process studies within the climate science community.

Save the date for the Tropical Pacific Observing Needs Workshop, May 24-26, 2021. This workshop will gather community input on the types of Tropical Pacific ocean and atmosphere observations needed to advance understanding of poorly observed subgrid-scale processes and how such observations could be leveraged to improve satellite retrievals, data assimilation, and parameterized processes in climate, forecast, and biogeochemical models.

In preparation for the Workshop on Observing, Modeling, and Understanding the Circulation of the Arctic Ocean and Sub-Arctic Seas, the organizing committee initiated an online topical community discussion to share perspectives in advance of the workshop.

Requests are now being accepted for new US CLIVAR-sponsored working groups for 2021. Submissions are encouraged from the US climate science community. All documents must be submitted by October 16, 2020. The next call for working groups will be in September 2021.