S P A R C Stratospheric Processes And their Role in Climate A project of the World Climate Research Programme Home Initiatives Organisation Publications Meetings Acronyms and Abbreviations Useful Links

News and Views from the SPARC Co-Chairs

It has been a very good year for SPARC.  Having served SPARC superbly for more than a decade in Paris (France), our International Project Office (IPO) has relocated smoothly to Toronto (Canada). Our 3rd General Assembly, held in Victoria (Canada), was a great success.  Our science programme is developing strongly, thanks to the efforts of an enthusiastic SPARC community.  And our role as a key project in the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) is being enhanced by strengthening links with other international projects, both within the WCRP and within the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP).

The new SPARC IPO was set up at the University of Toronto in April 2004, staffed by Norman McFarlane (Director), Diane Pendlebury, (Project Scientist) and Victoria De Luca (Project Manager).  The relocation from Paris to Toronto went smoothly thanks to their efforts, and to the unstinting help of Marie-Lise Chanin and Catherine Michaut at the Paris office. Catherine willingly made extended visits to Canada to help get the new office under way, helping, for instance, to produce this newsletter.  There cannot be many people in the SPARC community who have not had occasion to be grateful to Marie-Lise or Catherine at some time or another.  On your behalf, we warmly thank them for their commitment to SPARC and for their professionalism in running the SPARC IPO in Paris. We are also grateful to CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), and Meteo France for their support of the SPARC office in Paris.  Luckily for SPARC – and especially for us, the far less well-organised co-chairs – Norm, Diane and Victoria have taken over without a hitch.

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support for the new IPO given by several Canadian sponsors: the Meteorolo-gical Service of Canada (MSC), the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Science (CFCAS), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the Climate Change Action Fund (CCAF) and the University of Toronto.

In August 2004, SPARC’s 3rd General Assembly was held in beautiful surroundings (and balmy summer weather) in Victoria (BC), Canada. The science programme was structured around overview talks to outline the key scientific issues for each session, contributed talks, poster sessions, overarching talks we called SPARC lectures, and a special talk by Prof. F. S. Rowland. The poster sessions were given ample time, and (with the slight encouragement of a cash bar) were seen to be highlights of the General Assembly, as the organisers intended.  Some of the key developments highlighted were that: (1) chemistry-climate models have finally reached a level of maturity for attribution and prediction of long-term changes in the stratosphere; (2) process studies in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere (UT/LS) demand an interdisciplinary approach, involving models and measurements; (3) high-resolution (cloud-resolving) modelling will play an important role in understanding the UT/LS; (4) connections between different timescales are important for dynamical variability on seasonal and climate timescales; and (5) there is an emerging understanding of the nature of long-term changes (beyond trends) involving temperature, water vapour, ozone, methane and other chemical species.  You can read more about the scientific highlights of the General Assembly in this newsletter.  We thank the local organizers and the Scientific Organizing Committee for their excellent work. (Please see the names in the report on the General Assembly.)

The scientific programme of the General Assembly was organised around the new structure of SPARC (Figure 1). There are three main themes: chemistry-climate interactions; detection, attribution and prediction of stratospheric change; and stratosphere-troposphere dynamical coupling. The first of these, chemistry-climate interactions, is being pursued as a joint activity with the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Project (IGAC) of the IGBP.  The themes are integrators of activities in SPARC.  A critical role in SPARC is played by the working groups, which focus on specific activities that support the main science themes. (See the back page of this newsletter for further details).  The working groups are where much of the hard work gets done.  As SPARC’s priorities evolve, the working groups reconstitute themselves accordingly.

Figure 1.  The structure of recently adopted SPARC activities is shown in the figure.  The activities of SPARC, a project of WCRP, are aligned into thematic areas shown as shaded ovals.  The basic information for SPARC research and activities are in the form of observation, process studies, and modelling, which are integral to all the three themes; they are shown as boxes supporting the themes and connecting to the specific tasks that are shown as ovals below.  The specific tasks are the heart of SPARC and it is through these tasks that SPARC activities are carried out and the SPARC community is involved. This is meant to be a "living"figure in which, for example, new ovals will be added for additional SPARC activities when they are established. For better resolution, please contact the SPARC Office

The GCM Reality Intercomparison Project for SPARC (GRIPS), for example, has played a leading role internationally in identifying strengths and weaknesses of climate models that have a representation of the stratosphere.  The last formal meeting of GRIPS will be held in Hawaii, March 21-25, 2005. Many mo-delling issues remain problematic, however (e.g. the representation of gravity waves).  Effort will now be focused on these issues in the context of the three SPARC themes, such as chemistry-climate model evaluation.  We thank Steve Pawson, GRIPS leader, and his colleagues for running GRIPS so successfully, and for their long-standing commitment. 

We should like to mention one new working group, in particular, which is currently being formed – the working group on solar variability. Kuni Kodera is leading this activity for SPARC, in close collaboration with the CAWSES (Climate and Weather of the Sun-Earth System) project of SCOSTEP.  Understanding the impact of solar variability on the stratosphere, and on the rest of the climate system remains, a very high priority for SPARC.  Such an understanding is essential scientific underpinning for our theme on detection, attribution and prediction of stratospheric change, and we very much welcome the developing collaboration with CAWSES.

Collaborations "closer to home" within WCRP are essential, if our knowledge of the stratosphere is to be brought to bear on wider issues of change in the physical climate system.  WCRP’s strategy for the next ten years has, as its central integrating theme, the Coordinated Observation and Prediction of the Earth System (COPES).  The aim is to facilitate prediction of Earth system variability and change for use in an increasing range of applications of direct value to society.  SPARC will be fully involved in this initiative.  We have been tasked with leading WCRP efforts on chemistry-climate interactions, in collaboration with WCRP’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) and with IGBP’s IGAC project.  Amongst other contributions to COPES, SPARC will be represented on the Task Force for Seasonal Prediction, on the Modelling Panel, and in the Working Group on Observations and Assimilation (WGOA) of the Climate System.  CLIVAR, a major pro-ject in WCRP, is large and multi-faceted. Although the interests of SPARC and CLIVAR overlap, previous links between the two projects have not been as strong as they should have been. There are now so many scientific points of contact between CLIVAR and SPARC that forging stronger links leading to joint activities is a priority.

During the next few years, our efforts will be directed at contributing effectively to future scientific assessments – the next WMO/UNEP Ozone Assessment (2006) and IPCC report (2007) – as well as participating fully in the planning and execution of scientific campaigns for the International Polar Year, 2007-2008.  If you are reading this as a newcomer to SPARC, and would like to get more involved with an extremely enthusiastic, committed scientific community, please contact us. We’d be delighted to hear from you.  We also welcome comments and suggestions from the veterans of SPARC who have made this project such a success. 

We thank the participation of the SSG in fleshing out the themes, tasks, etc. and the continued involvements in the workings of SPARC.  The next SSG meeting will be held in Oxford, England in September of 2005.  The venue for the next General Assembly will be decided at the meeting or soon after.

SPARC co-Chairs

Alan O’Neill(1),   A.R. Ravishankara(2)

(1) Data Assimilation Research Centre, Reading, UK (alan@met.reading.ac.uk)

(2) NOAA-Aeronomy Laboratory, Boulder, USA (A.R.Ravishankara@noaa.gov)

TOP