GENERAL INFORMATION

Background

The Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA) and the Hadley Centre of the U.K. Met Office will convene a workshop to discuss initial results from Climate of the 20th Century (C20C) model integrations on Tuesday - Friday, 22-25 January 2002. The workshop will be held at COLA in Calverton, Maryland, USA.

The C20C project was originally created by the Hadley Centre. This project has involved the use of both ocean-forced AGCMs and observed data, to study climate variations and changes over the last 130 years, in particular the period since 1949. The project took on an international dimension when a number of groups became interested in using the same SST and sea-ice data for simulating climate variability and change. Many informal bilateral collaborations between the Hadley Centre and groups in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and UK universities were formed, along with a few smaller collaborations elsewhere. Many other groups also have copies of the Hadley Centre's global sea-ice and sea surface temperature data set, formerly GISST, now called HadISST, which is the central link in C20C. In late 1994, a very successful workshop was held at the Hadley Centre (Folland and Rowell, 1995, "Workshop on Simulations of the Climate of the Twentieth Century using GISST, 28-30 November 1994, Hadley Centre", CRTN 56), and in 1995 a C20C session was included in the 1st International AMIP Conference. The C20C idea is also mentioned in the CLIVAR plan and has been endorsed by the Working Group on Numerical Experimentation. The Hadley Centre and COLA agreed in 1998 to re-invigorate and formalize the International C20C Project, with the necessary infrastructure to be supplied by COLA. Several research groups making use of AGCMs were invited and have agreed to participate.

The basic scientific idea of C20C is that up to three sets of ensemble simulations are to be run by each participating institute:

1. The first set is the 'classic' C20C/extended-AMIP type runs, using HadISST1.1 (improved from GISST3.0 and 3.1) to simulate the period 1949-1997, with a minimum ensemble size of four members. All participating institutes would run these experiments, although some would start them earlier; HadISST1.1 begins in 1871.
2. The second (optional) ensemble will also include most known atmospheric and external forcings, both natural and anthropogenic (see Forcing Functions for Second Set of Integrations). Again, we envisage ensemble sizes of at least four members, with runs starting from 1871 or 1949.
3. The third (also optional) ensemble of C20C experiments will explore the additional impact of land surf ace changes on recent climate change and variability, particularly regional climates. These integrations will probably start from 1970.

The first set of C20C integrations (with observed lower boundary conditions and fixed radiatively-active species) will mainly be discussed at the workshop. Additionally, the Hadley Centre has extensive results from the second set using HadAM3 forced with GISST3.1. Some results and an analysis methodology will be presented.

Registration

All participants are requested to register with the Workshop Secretariat by 30 November 2001. The registration form is available online at http://www.iges.org/c20c/registration.html

Hotel accommodations

A block of rooms has been reserved at The Sheraton College Park Hotel. Conference participants should make reservations directly with Mr. Scott Baker at the Hotel at 301-937-4422 extension 7998, identifying themselves as members of the COLA group and providing Meeting Code CDC.The block will be held until Saturday, December 15, 2001.

Meals and refreshments

Workshop participants will be provided lunch on each day of the meeting as well as refreshments at the morning and afternoon breaks. There will be a reception at the end of the proceedings on 22 January 2002 and a workshop dinner will be organized on the evening of 23 January 2002.

Official Language

The official language of the workshop will be English.