Review of the U.S. CLIVAR Project Office (2004)

The USCPO performs a broad range of activities related to U.S. CLIVAR development. These tasks include producing scientific plans and other associated documents on behalf of the SSC, and conducting scientific workshops and preparing resultant publications. The committee construes these documents as including traditional printed media, meeting planning and documentation materials, presentations, and website materials. The committee’s assessment of the USCPO’s fulfillment of these tasks comes from both the anonymous questionnaire and the committee’s meeting with the SSC co-chairs, IAG members, and others.

In 2003 U.S. CLIVAR offered a new research vehicle to more effectively link process studies with coupled climate model development. Termed Climate Process and Modeling Teams (CPTs), they now are a central piece of the present U.S. CLIVAR approach. The USCPO actively developed and advocated the CPTs, an effort for which they were highly commended. The USCPO also developed the Climate Model Evaluation Project (CMEP), which supports diagnostic analyses to evaluate U.S. coupled climate models and better quantify uncertainty in future climate projections. The CMEP opened U.S. CLIVAR to engagement with several climate modeling groups and with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) process. Because these activities yield specific products for models, continued implementation of the CMEP and CPTs could be critical for expanding the interest of mission-oriented agencies, such as NOAA, DOE, and NASA (see the discussion on support for the IAG later in this chapter), in U.S. CLIVAR. Moreover, the CPTs and CMEP operate through relatively open (i.e., public) proposal and funding processes, which importantly facilitates the inclusion of a larger group of U.S. scientists into U.S. CLIVAR.

The USCPO has taken a more traditional³ project office role in U.S. CLIVAR process experiments, largely because these are created through the U.S. CLIVAR SSC and are carried out by a well-defined group of investigators who take the lead in proposing and negotiating funding. The USCPO provides public documentation through meeting minutes and website linkages to the experiments. With the addition of a second staff person, Ms. Cathy Stephens, to the USCPO in January 2004, the online information about U.S. CLIVAR has begun to expand. The USCPO intends to make all minutes, reports, and proceedings available online; this is an important communication function of the USCPO which the committee supports.

A more activist role of the USCPO, with respect to all of the implementation activities of U.S. CLIVAR and its panels and working groups (see Figure 1.2), is its current development of a roadmap that will draw together the implementation plans of the individual panels, relate them to the overarching U.S. CLIVAR Implementation Plan, and track current and accomplished activities. The committee believes this roadmap will highlight opportunities for greater participation from various agencies and from a diverse group of scientists who might not already be entrained in CLIVAR, thus it supports this effort.

The USCPO Director, Dr. David Legler, participates regularly in International CLIVAR SSG meetings. The committee supports this activity, as it provides regular interaction and information exchange between U.S. and International CLIVAR. For example, Dr. Legler has extensive experience with data management, which is proving useful to International CLIVAR. Data management and archiving was a vital component of previous WCRP projects, such as TOGA and WOCE, and it is becoming an important issue for CLIVAR. The committee anticipates that U.S. CLIVAR will work with International CLIVAR in assessing data management needs, and the USCPO should remain active in this discussion.

The USCPO received ubiquitous praise for providing excellent support for U.S. CLIVAR meetings and workshops. In particular, it very successfully organized the First International CLIVAR Science Conference held in June 2004, which was an extremely ambitious meeting in terms of the scope of topics and the number of U.S. and international participants. The meeting proceedings, abstracts, and posters are being made available online by the USCPO, and the committee supports this effort. Moreover, in the wake of that successful conference, the co-chairs of the International CLIVAR SSG intend to produce a document summarizing the key themes that emerged and outlining their vision for corresponding International and U.S. CLIVAR research. The USCPO should encourage this activity and provide support for producing it.

Among the USCPO’s key tasks related to staffing for the SSC are overseeing the coordination of SSC meetings and providing travel support for university participants, supporting travel for U.S. representatives to International CLIVAR meetings through JOSS, and supporting subcommittees and working groups of U.S. CLIVAR. The committee investigated the efficacy of the USCPO in supporting the SSC by interviewing the current co-chairs, Dr. James Hurrell and Dr. Robert Weller. Dr. Weller provided written input, presented at the committee’s meeting, and answered numerous questions from the panel. Dr. Hurrell participated in a conference call⁴ with a couple of committee members.

Both co-chairs spoke very favorably of the USCPO and especially of Dr. Legler. In terms of general staffing for the SSC, the evaluation of the USCPO and Dr. Legler is uniformly excellent. However, Dr. Legler’s support for the SSC goes well above and beyond simple staffing and meeting support. He clearly moves the U.S. CLIVAR project forward, translates ideas generated by the SSC into concrete plans, and works to implement them.

The SSC co-chairs view the SSC, USCPO, and IAG as a triumvirate, with the USCPO as the lynchpin. The co-chairs noted that, if any criticisms of the U.S. CLIVAR project are made or

if the system somehow fails, the external community may inappropriately blame the USCPO because it is the most visible element of the U.S. CLIVAR project. However, the co-chairs were adamant that any perceived problems with the U.S. CLIVAR project should not be attributed to the USCPO. Rather, any problems likely are due to the SSC’s lack of helping the USCPO prioritize, but Dr. Legler has done an excellent job in spite of the lack of guidance.

The committee found that Dr. Legler acts in a somewhat nontraditional⁵ role relative to other similar project office directors. He is nearly the sole interface between the SSC and IAG. Other than the annual SSC meeting, the SSC and its co-chairs infrequently meet with the IAG or otherwise communicate with the individual members of the IAG about U.S. CLIVAR. Although the co-chairs feel that Dr. Legler keeps them very well informed of relevant issues with the IAG via monthly teleconferences and that he provides an effective interface, it appears to the committee that Dr. Legler is playing a role that would normally be played by the SSC chairs in some of its interactions with the IAG. Although this mode of interaction between the SSC and IAG seems to be working well largely due to the capabilities of Dr. Legler, there should be more direct communication between the SSC co-chairs and IAG members on issues such as scientific prioritization. This is especially crucial for mitigating communication problems should the situation arise in which Dr. Legler is no longer the USCPO Director.

The SSC co-chairs stated that they would like to see better outreach to the scientific community and more workshops to develop specific programs and projects. Again, because of the historical lack of guidance by the SSC, Dr. Legler develops his own priorities and decides what tasks to undertake, which can be burdensome. As an example, the aforementioned International CLIVAR Science Conference held in June 2004 was organized entirely by the USCPO. Although the majority of people who provided input to the committee (i.e., via the questionnaire or directly) agree that the conference was a great success and that the USCPO did a superb job supported by JOSS, the USCPO might have benefited from utilizing JOSS more, especially in such logistical aspects as coordinating directly with the conference center and preparing the brochures. Although Dr. Legler is to be commended for his unfailing diligence and hard work, the SSC and IAG should provide more input to him on prioritization of USCPO time and resources, especially given the USCPO’s limited staffing resources. Dr. Legler also should be conscientious about prioritizing his time and declining tasks for which the USCPO does not have the resources to undertake.

In supporting the IAG, the USCPO is expected to coordinate budgets between different agencies supporting U.S. CLIVAR and assist in drafting interagency program announcements as requested by IAG, occasionally prepare budget assessments and program tracking for the many U.S. CLIVAR activities sponsored by these agencies, and analyze current funding trends within the U.S. CLIVAR community and provide the IAG with advice as to areas of focus. To assess the USCPO’s support for the IAG, the committee invited all the members (i.e., DOE, NASA, NOAA, and NSF) to a meeting; the committee heard from a total of nine representatives from these agencies (Appendix C).

The USCPO received a uniformly positive assessment from the NOAA and NSF representatives. These two agencies, which are the most active members of the IAG, rely heavily on the USCPO and feel that it serves as an essential point of contact for all U.S. CLIVAR related activities. They particularly praised Dr. Legler for his intellect and his devotion since the project office’s inception. The USCPO is highly responsive to queries from NOAA and NSF program managers, and the program managers find the meetings between the USCPO and IAG to be worthwhile and productive.

Arguably, the most important function of the USCPO in support of the IAG is to communicate the science recommendations and plans from the SSC to the IAG, and to communicate funding opportunities and realities to the SSC. As such, the USCPO acts as the conduit between the SSC and IAG to facilitate the transition of the science goals to funded research programs. As noted in the NRC report on the WCRP (NRC, 2001), this function resulted in a marked improvement in the science coordination and direction.

Much of the IAG members’ testimony about the USCPO was similar to that of the SSC co-chairs. The IAG members strongly believe that the USCPO support is essential to the implementation of all U.S. CLIVAR activities. Regarding the relationship between the SSC and IAG, the USCPO plays a key role in relaying issues raised by the SSC to the IAG. The IAG feels that the USCPO has maintained a high level of independence, and they believe that the USCPO has been very effective in identifying gaps in the U.S. CLIVAR project and working with the IAG to fill them. For example, Dr. Legler helped the IAG to recognize that U.S. CLIVAR must support the goal of improving climate predictions for decision support, which resulted in the aforementioned CPTs and CMEP. Again, Dr. Legler’s efforts in coordinating and promoting these were crucial to their success. The USCPO should continue taking an active role in identifying gaps in the U.S. CLIVAR project and working with the IAG to find ways to fill them.

Although a strong relationship exists between the USCPO and some of the IAG members, there is uneven participation among all the IAG agencies. As a result, some of the interactions between the SSC and IAG are not as effective as they could be. This is most apparent in NASA’s lack of participation in U.S. CLIVAR-related activities. It appears that NASA believes that the long term climate studies supported by U.S. CLIVAR are too long to be incorporated in most of its modeling activities and many of its ocean observing programs. Thus, NASA does not presently have a CLIVAR project and they are not actively involved in the SSC-USCPO-IAG process. However, the connections and potential benefits stemming from more active participation between the U.S. CLIVAR program and NASA seem obvious. For example, NASA has a Seasonal-to-Interannual Prediction Project (NSIPP), the goal of which is to develop a data assimilation and forecast system capable of using satellite and in situ data to improve the prediction of major seasonal-to-interannual signals and their teleconnections (e.g., ENSO). Thus, the goal of the NSIPP matches one of the goals of the U.S. CLIVAR program. Likewise, all of the U.S. CLIVAR process experiments have utilized and benefited from the global satellite products provide by NASA to interpret their findings. As such, NASA has been involved, albeit indirectly, with U.S. CLIVAR science since its inception. Therefore, an effort should be made to promote more active involvement between NASA and U.S. CLIVAR science. NASA IAG members and the SSC must actively work together if this effort is to be successful, and the USCPO should actively participate as the intermediary to increase the chance of success. The USCPO should assist the NASA IAG members with gathering and providing information to NASA management that demonstrates the connections between NASA’s mission and U.S.

CLIVAR’s objectives. For example, the USCPO should coordinate documentation of key achievements that were a direct result of satellite data provided by NASA archives. This type of effort should be extended to all the IAG agencies; this will provide them with necessary information that the agency representatives can use to report to their upper management to advertise the utility and success of the U.S. CLIVAR project.

DOE also is an inactive participant in U.S. CLIVAR, although their lack of involvement is historically based because the initial focus of U.S. CLIVAR was on the role of naturally occurring process in climate variability. DOE does not fund any U.S. CLIVAR efforts, nor do they provide funding to the USCPO. Rather, it has alternate frameworks for meeting its science objectives, many of which predate CLIVAR. However, new U.S. CLIVAR initiatives, such as the CPTs and CMEP, map onto activities that DOE undertakes, providing a clear opportunity for collaboration and funding. Specifically, if, as expected, U.S. CLIVAR becomes more actively involved in anthropogenic climate change research, then the USCPO should make it a priority to communicate to DOE and the SSC the opportunities this poses to potentially establish a future relationship between DOE and U.S. CLIVAR.

Although stated as a primary task of supporting the IAG, the USCPO has not undertaken any budget analyses. This primarily is due to two related factors: (1) ambiguity between CLIVAR-specific and CLIVAR-related programs and (2) some reluctance by NOAA and NSF to label a program as U.S. CLIVAR. The former can largely be attributed to the breadth of the U.S. CLIVAR project; a large fraction of climate-related research in the United States could be viewed as meeting the objectives of CLIVAR. As a result, what constitutes funding for U.S. CLIVAR varies among the agencies, and budgetary information on CLIVAR research is not always readily available. Although NOAA’s CLIVAR-funded projects are clearly labeled as such, some of its programs that address U.S. CLIVAR objectives are not considered CLIVAR.

This lack of transparency hinders the visibility of the U.S. CLIVAR project; for example, NSF noted that about half of the people who receive funding with their atmospheric division are funded under U.S. CLIVAR, but they are unaware of it. NSF indicated that it would be very easy for them to label their U.S. CLIVAR-funded proposals as such and to convey this information to the proposal recipients. Tracking this type of information would make it easier for the SSC and the USCPO to know whether and to what extent the U.S. CLIVAR objectives are being researched or achieved. To facilitate better tracking of meeting U.S. CLIVAR objectives and to increase awareness about the U.S. CLIVAR project, NOAA and NSF should identify their programs that contribute to meeting U.S. CLIVAR objectives as “U.S. CLIVAR-related,” and they should convey this information to recipients of related proposals. Correspondingly, the USCPO should undertake budget assessments and tracking by categorizing agencies’ projects as either “U.S. CLIVAR projects” or “U.S. CLIVAR-related projects”. The committee recognizes that uncertainties in these budget estimates are unavoidable, particularly in the U.S. CLIVAR-related classification. Nevertheless, the USCPO is strongly encouraged to proceed with its budget analysis and tracking activities working with the IAG and the information at hand.

There is reluctance among some funding agencies to label their programs as U.S. CLIVAR, which obviously hampers the tracking efforts. This hesitation is related to the goals of the funding agencies, which reward fast, concise science with anticipated, explicit deliverables that can be used to support decision-making. This ideology is at odds with the goals of U.S. CLIVAR, which require long-term studies to meet long-term objectives. As a result, the agencies have shied away from the CLIVAR label, which is viewed as being slow and diffuse. Although there is no denying that the U.S. CLIVAR has long-range goals, the slow and diffuse label is

largely inaccurate. A number of recommendations to change this perception are given later in this chapter in the discussion on publicity and publication as well as in Chapter 3. As stated above, the USCPO is essential in helping the IAG communicate the U.S. CLIVAR concepts to the scientific community and agency management. To further support these efforts, the USCPO should make presentations at the request of the IAG to the agencies’ advisory groups to convey the utility of the U.S. CLIVAR project, including the range of timescales on which U.S. CLIVAR achievements can be made.

The mandate of the USCPO with respect to coordination between the U.S. national and the International CLIVAR efforts includes serving as a point of contact for the International CLIVAR Project Office (ICPO) and its sub-panels, coordinating the U.S. component of international scientific conferences and field experiments, and organizing joint activities with GEWEX and other relevant U.S. Global Change Research Program projects. The USCPO has sought to fulfill this mandate as far as its personnel and financial resources permit. To gauge its success in doing so, the director of the ICPO, Dr. Howard Cattle, was interviewed in addition to the input from the IAG members and the SSC co-chairs.

As mentioned previously, one way in which Dr. Legler maintains international ties is by attending meetings of the International CLIVAR SSG to represent the interests of U.S. CLIVAR and the IAG. The USCPO also provides some funds for scientists attending international meetings, which helps to ensure U.S. representation.

The USCPO also collaborates with and works to assist the ICPO in many ways. As discussed in the budgetary breakdown in Chapter 1, the USCPO facilitates financial support for the ICPO through UCAR. The USCPO also has encouraged and facilitated meetings between Dr. Cattle and representatives from various U.S. governmental agencies involved in U.S. CLIVAR. However, despite establishing these direct relationships, Dr. Cattle stressed that having the USCPO as a central resource for U.S. CLIVAR is critical. It serves as a source for anyone to go to, and it is especially essential to the ICPO when they need to communicate with the SSC or the panels or working groups.

The IAG representatives also unanimously expressed their impression that the USCPO has very adequately represented the U.S. CLIVAR interests to the ICPO and other international partners by fostering closer communication between its national panels and international counterparts. There is a clear perception that the USCPO is ensuring adequate representation of the U.S. scientific community at relevant international fora.

The USCPO has not been engaged in coordination of the U.S. component of international field experiments primarily because of its resource constraints. The committee was not able to ascertain whether the U.S. component of any of the international field experiments under CLIVAR had been inadequately coordinated because of this limitation. During discussions with the staff of the USCPO and agency representatives, the committee noted that interagency coordination of field programs would be of value in enhancing the synergies between the programs of the agencies, especially in use of observational platforms and data products of NASA and DOE. The USCPO could assist the IAG to ensure that future field programs of individual agencies are better coordinated. Moreover, the U.S. CLIVAR project may also benefit from collaborations with its sister organizations such as WCRP or IGBP, especially for integrated regional studies and detection of significant changes in climate records. As a first step

in this regard, the USCPO should consult with the SSC and the IAG members to determine the need for and pragmatic ways to (1) foster collaboration between IAG member agencies in CLIVAR-related national and international field experiments and (2) collaborate with its sister organizations.

In addition to opportunistic field programs and regional studies, the USCPO could further engage IAG members by strengthening ties with other complementary activities, especially those that already are linked to the agencies. For example, NASA is the primary sponsor of the International GEWEX Project Office (IGPO), which is implementing a number of field experiments that affect the U.S. CLIVAR project. Collaboration between the USCPO and the IGPO would be beneficial to both programs, and it could facilitate NASA’s engagement in U.S. CLIVAR and in the operation of the USCPO. The USCPO should collaborate with the IGPO to organize a session at the International GEWEX Conference to be held in June 2005 to discuss collaborative issues.

Finally, although the U.S. CLIVAR project profile does not explicitly address issues directly relevant to anthropogenic climate change and the IPCC, there is considerable overlap between U.S. CLIVAR research activities and the Climate Variability and Change theme of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP). U.S. CLIVAR scientists, members of the SSC, and the USCPO gave significant input in the development of the strategic plan for the CCSP (CCSP, 2003). Given the co-location of the USCPO and the CCSP office and the resultant synergy, there are opportunities for valuable ongoing interactions between the two entities. The USCPO should maintain close interactions with the CCSP office and identify synergies between the U.S. CLIVAR objectives and the CCSP goals, but the USCPO should maintain its focus on activities directly relevant to U.S. CLIVAR.

One of the most critical tasks for any project office is to provide communication pathways and supporting material about the project it supports. For the USCPO, this entails communicating about the U.S. CLIVAR project, developing and maintaining the U.S. CLIVAR web site, producing regular informational material, and giving presentations about the status of U.S. CLIVAR science and its activities. All these tasks are necessary to ensure effective transmission of information about U.S. CLIVAR to (1) scientists participating in U.S. CLIVAR research, its sub-panels and working groups, the SSC, and the IAG; (2) the related scientific community; and (3) the public. Although this is only one of the USCPO’s several responsibilities, it is especially critical to the success of the U.S. CLIVAR project as a whole as this function supports and is necessary for other tasks to succeed. The anonymous questionnaire was especially useful for assessing the USCPO’s performance of this task from a large audience, and the committee also received input via its meeting with the SSC co-chairs, IAG members, and others.

With such a broad spectrum of recipients for information about U.S. CLIVAR, it is essential that the communications, publicity, and publications be a multi-media effort. The USCPO has achieved this via a variety of informational media, including (1) semi-regular published newsletters, which include such things as articles about U.S. CLIVAR-related research and field experiments; (2) monthly email newsgrams, which include such things as related climate information, job announcements, and workshop and conference announcements; and (3)

the U.S. CLIVAR web site, which contains information such as the structure of U.S. CLIVAR, meeting reports, and posters given at related scientific conferences.

In general, the IAG members and SSC co-chairs believe that the USCPO is meeting its core communication and publication responsibilities. There are problems with some of these efforts, however, including the USCPO’s irregularity in producing the newsletter and the outdatedness of the U.S. CLIVAR web site (a common problem for many project offices). The committee believes that the primary reason for these shortcomings is the multitude of tasks for which the USCPO is responsible, which is compounded by the lack of sufficient staff resources. Ms. Stephens’s joining the USCPO in January 2004 has alleviated these problems to some extent. She has done an excellent job in making these outreach media more regular and up-to-date, and the committee commends her and urges her to continue these efforts. Despite the USCPO’s limited resources, the responses to the questionnaire suggest that 6879 percent of the community agrees or strongly agrees with the USCPO’s publication and communication activities in terms of the topics communicated, media used, timeliness, and accessibility (Appendix A), a feat for which the USCPO is to be commended.

Although the USCPO has achieved much success in relaying U.S. CLIVAR information, the committee learned that significant communication problems still exist. For example, the objectives of U.S. CLIVAR make it a large, nearly all-encompassing project that can seem unwieldy. Therefore, there is some confusion within the atmospheric and climate communities about what U.S. CLIVAR activities and related research exist and what successes there have been, and this confusion extends to the broader community and the public. This is a very real concern, as the basic understanding or lack thereof of the U.S. CLIVAR project greatly affects the success of the project itself as well as all the other tasks of the USCPO. There needs to be improved communication about U.S. CLIVAR science to the U.S. CLIVAR community, to the broader atmospheric and climate communities, and to the public. The USCPO can assist with this by (1) continuing its effort to develop a roadmap that will tie together U.S. CLIVAR activities with its objectives; (2) publicizing information about what U.S. CLIVAR and the USCPO is and is not to government agencies, the scientific community, and the public; (3) including a list of peer-reviewed publications that meet U.S. CLIVAR objectives on the U.S. CLIVAR web site; and (4) publishing an annual article about U.S. CLIVAR successes in wide-reaching publications such as the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union’s EOS newsletter.

Another communication-related issue is the perceived impermeability of the U.S. CLIVAR project, including its research, committees, panels, and working groups. Because U.S. CLIVAR represents just a fraction of the funded U.S. climate research community, the USCPO should broadly advertise workshops and conferences to attract both U.S. CLIVAR-funded researchers and also those who are contributing to the workshop and meeting topics but who do not receive U.S. CLIVAR funding. The 2004 International CLIVAR Science Conference was broad in this respect, and consequently it was an exciting, productive meeting. Moreover, it is essential that that there are sufficient outreach efforts to attract the broadest range of potential investigators. Therefore, the USCPO should assist the SSC in fostering greater participation in coordinated research activities, and provide a roadmap to assist individual investigators in becoming part of CLIVAR. It also is essential that U.S. CLIVAR entrain new investigators, particularly young ones. The USCPO should assist the SSC in identifying promising young investigators to fill positions on committees and working groups and in leadership capacities,

as much of U.S. CLIVAR depends on small and large group initiatives, which may appear to be difficult to penetrate for new investigators.

A final function of the USCPO is to support the U.S. CLIVAR’s oversight body, the NRC’s Climate Research Committee (CRC). The USCPO does this by providing the CRC with documents and briefing materialswhich generally are related to the CRC’s oversight of WCRP activitieswhen requested. For example, in 2002 the USCPO provided input to the CRC encouraging the formation of a U.S. CliC project office. The USCPO also coordinated the visit of the director of the WCRP, Dr. David Carson, to the United States in 2003, arranging meetings with the CRC and with Dr. James Mahoney, director of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. Although these requests have been very few, the USCPO does an adequate job of engaging the CRC when relevant and of supplying them with valuable information. In particular, the USCPO responses to requests for inputs for this review have been excellent.