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Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research

Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research

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Project • CBA2010-05NSY-Lorrey

Improving Pacific Island Meteorological Data Rescue and Data Visualisation Capabilities through Involvement in Emerging Climate Research Programmes

A workshop was held in Auckland, New Zealand on emerging climate research programmes focused on the southwest Pacific region. Climate scientists, meteorologists, physical geographers, social scientists, and information technology specialists from many nations were in attendance. The participants included representatives of Pacific Island National Meteorological Services (PINMS), who were engaged about cutting‐edge research techniques that use rescued climate and weather data from their region of the world. Amongst the many presentations about weather and climate research, training was provided on new visualization methods for analyzing weather and climate data using GoogleEarth and the NOAA 20th Century Reanalysis (20CR) (Compo et al., 2011). The interests and concerns about climate and weather monitoring, data stewardship, database development and research using Pacific Island meteorological observations were raised by the PINMS representatives. All the attendees expressed their willingness to participate collegially in new research that clearly has potential to benefit the region. This workshop helped to address some of the gaps that APN GEOSS has identified for capacity building needs in the Pacific region, including collaboration with new science initiatives, increasing regional opportunities for gaining research experience, and with a central focus on the priority actions of rescue, interpretation, and use of archived meteorological and climate data. The workshop representatives supported the formation of ACRE Pacific, which will seek to recover, digitize, share, and submit daily surface pressure measurement contributions from each Pacific island nation. This will be done to enhance the spatial and temporal coverage of the 20CR dataset. It is hoped that the contributions of the small island nations and territories in the southwest Pacific will result in large improvements in the quality of reanalysis data and climate science targeting understanding Pacific‐region weather and climate variability. In particular, delegates in attendance wish to see increased opportunities for involvement on research related to the El Niño Southern Oscillation, tropical cyclones, climate and weather forecasting, and the South Pacific Convergence Zone.