2015 IASCLiP Virtual Workshop

Objective

The purpose of the virtual workshop is to provide a platform to facilitate discussions to understand local and remote atmospheric and oceanic processes that lead to variations in the warm pool in the Intra-Americas Seas (IAS), the dynamics and physics of the teleconnections of the IAS with the continental monsoons of the Americas and weather extremes spanning across time scales, and the opportunities for translating understanding to improved monitoring and prediction of the variations and change in the IAS and their associated impacts. The virtual workshop will address model biases in the region and identify new technology or platforms to improve the rapidly deteriorating observational network of the atmosphere, to bolster ocean observations, and to enhance capacity building in the region.

The virtual workshop will be organized around six sessions that will cover observational and modeling studies of the IAS spanning intra-seasonal to secular time scales including extremes.  The aim of these sessions is to assess the current limitations of both the observational networks and model performance for the region, report on the current state of our understanding of the important physical processes in both the atmosphere and ocean across weather and climate time scales, and promote new ideas for a regional observing system and modeling studies aimed at improving understanding and predictive skill on intra-seasonal to secular time scales.

Expected outcomes

This virtual workshop will help build a community of collaborators who will plan future research activities to capitalize on the findings and recommendations captured in a workshop report. The report will:

• Review the current state of understanding of the variability and changes of the IAS and its remote influences;
• Develop targeted metrics to diagnose critical model errors across time scales;
• Identify opportunities to improve our understanding of the coupled ocean-land-atmosphere processes in the region;
• Highlight outstanding issues relating to the prediction and predictability of the region; and
• Recommend actions on improving the observational network, coordinating modeling experiments, and forging international collaborations.

The virtual workshop will also explore the potential for a special collection of articles on the IAS and its impact on the continental Americas and the Caribbean.

Format

The virtual workshop will be held online through a webconferencing system on September 9-11, 2015 - four hours each day inclusive of a one hour break and poster discussion. This new format is a great way to allow for broad participation from both US and international communities. There are five sessions of four talks each, plus discussion time (15 minutes per talk plus 5 minutes for Q&A), and a closing session comprised of a panel of speakers. A virtual poster session will begin two weeks prior to the workshop and end two weeks after. Participants will be encouraged to comment on the posters online as well as bring information from the posters into the workshop discussions. A virtual poster hangout is being planned for the one-hour breaks each day. The Scientific Organizing Committee will select oral and poster presentations from the submitted abstracts. Please note there will be limited number of oral presentations. 

Scientific Organizing Committee

Vasu Misra (Florida State University) (co-chair)

German Poveda (National University of Colombia)

Erick Rivera Fernandez (University of Costa Rica)

Yolande Serra (University of Washington)

Chunzai Wang (NOAA Atlantic and Oceanographic Meteorological Laboratory) (co-chair)

Program Organizing Committee

Mike Patterson (US CLIVAR)

Jill Reisdorf (UCAR)

Kristan Uhlenbrock (US CLIVAR)