The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) is an international programme that helps to coordinate global

climate research Climatology (from Greek , ''klima'', "place, zone"; and , '' -logia'') or climate science is the scientific study of Earth's climate, typically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of at least 30 years. This modern field of stu ...

. The WCRP was established in 1980, under the joint sponsorship of the

World Meteorological Organization The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology and geophysics. The WMO originated from the Inter ...

(WMO) and the

International Council for Science The International Council for Science (ICSU, after its former name, International Council of Scientific Unions) was an international non-governmental organization devoted to multilateralism, international cooperation in the advancement of scie ...

(ICSU), and has also been sponsored by the

Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC/UNESCO) was established by resolution 2.31 adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO. It first met in Paris at Unesco Headquarters from 19 to 27 October 1961. Initially, 40 States becam ...

(IOC) of

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...

since 1993. The programme is funded by its three sponsors and additional contributions by nation states or other donors. WCRP uses these funds to organize science workshops or conferences and support collaboration between climate scientists at an international level. Its expert groups also develop international standards for climate data and propose future emphasis areas in international climate research, among others.

Mandate

WCRP's objective is stated as "a better understanding of the climate system and the causes of climate variability and change" and "to determine the predictability of climate; and to determine the effect of human activities on climate". In practice, the programme aims to foster initiatives in climate research which require or benefit from international coordination and which are unlikely to emerge from national efforts alone. The programme does not fund climate research directly, but may at times exchange views with research funding agencies on global research priorities.

Structure

The largest group of contributors to WCRP are several thousands of climate scientists from around the world who offer their expertise and time as volunteers to, for example, help organize workshops in key areas of research, lay out avenues for future research in

white paper A white paper is a report or guide that informs readers concisely about a complex issue and presents the issuing body's philosophy on the matter. It is meant to help readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision. A white paper ...

articles, and serve on WCRP science or advisory boards. Official scientific guidance for the programme is provided by a Joint Scientific Committee (JSC) consisting of 18 volunteer scientists selected by mutual agreement between the three sponsoring organizations. Everyday operations are supported by a secretariat of around 8 full-time staff, hosted by the

in Geneva.

Activities and projects

WCRP's largest activities are its four "Core Projects" (called

SPARC SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Its design was strongly influenced by the experimental Berkeley RISC system develope ...

CLIVAR CLIVAR (climate variability and predictability) is a component of the World Climate Research Programme. Its purpose is to describe and understand climate variability and predictability on seasonal to centennial time-scales, identify the physical pr ...

, CliC, and GEWEX), which support climate research on the global atmosphere, oceans, the

cryosphere ] The cryosphere (from the Ancient Greek, Greek ''kryos'', "cold", "frost" or "ice" and ''sphaira'', "globe, ball") is an all-encompassing term for those portions of Earth's surface where water is in solid form, including sea ice, lake ice, ri ...

, and the land surface (together constituting the Earth's physical climate system) as well as interactions and exchanges between them. Each Core Project again has a structure similar to that of WCRP itself, namely contributing scientists, a scientific steering group, and a secretariat ("international project office") hosted by individual countries. The programme further maintains topical working groups and advisory councils on climate data, climate modelling, subseasonal-to-decadal climate prediction, and regional climate modelling. Additional "Grand Challenges" target specific questions of societal interest within climate science. One particular output by a WCRP task team is the

Coupled Model Intercomparison Project In climatology, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) is a collaborative framework designed to improve knowledge of climate change. It was organized in 1995 by the Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) of the World Climate Resear ...

, which standardizes and coordinates regular comparisons of the world's climate models and which provides an important basis for the IPCC Assessment Reports' climate projections.

Stratospheric Processes And their Role in Climate

Stratosphere-troposphere Processes and their Role in Climate (SPARC) is a core project of the programme. Founded in 1992, SPARC has coordinated high-level research activities related to understanding Earth system processes for over two decades. More specifically, SPARC promotes and facilitates cutting-edge international research activities on how chemical and physical processes in the atmosphere interact with climate and climate change.

References

External links