GEWEX Continental Scale International Project (GCIP)
In Reply Refer To: December 6, 1993
Mail Stop 415
OFFICE OF SURFACE WATER TECHNICAL MEMORANDUM 94.01
Subject: GEWEX Continental Scale International Project (GCIP)
The purpose of this memorandum is to advise you of U.S. Geological
Survey (USGS) interest and participation in the GEWEX/GCIP
hydrologic modeling project, which is getting under way in the
Mississippi River basin, and to request your cooperation with the
GCIP project team.
GCIP (GEWEX Continental Scale International Project) is a central
component of the Global Energy and Water-Balance Experiment
(GEWEX), which is being conducted by the World Climate Research
Program under the auspices of the World Meteorological
Organization and the International Congress of Scientific Unions.
The USGS and other Federal agencies are participating in the GCIP
as part of the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
Major goals of the GCIP program include 1) determination of the
temporal and spatial variation of water and energy budgets by
observations on a continental scale, 2) development and testing of
large-scale models of the interactions between land-surface
hydrology and the atmosphere suitable for coupling with general
circulation models (GCM) and numerical weather prediction (NWP)
models, and 3) development and testing of models and procedures
for assessing the impact of possible climate variations on water-
resources systems. Large and continental scales in this context
refer to computational grid-point spacing on the order of several
tens of kilometers to a few hundred kilometers.
The initial focus of the GCIP is on the Mississippi River basin.
This basin was chosen because it is the continental-scale basin
that has the best developed observational network, data base, and
scientific infrastructure and because of improvements presently
underway in the operational observing systems (NEXRAD weather
radar, automated-weather observation systems, wind profilers,
etc).
Although the initial focus of the GCIP is on the Mississippi, the
goals of the project are not geographically limited, and it is
planned that the project findings and products will be
transferable worldwide to similar climatic and hydrological
environments. The Mississippi River GCIP is being coordinated
with other GCIP studies being planned in the Mackenzie, Amazon,
and Baltic Sea basins and in the Asian monsoon region.
The Mississippi River GCIP has been in planning and build-up
phases for the past three years. A GCIP Science Panel (including
Bob Hirsch, George Leavesley, and Harry Lins) has been formed. A
scientific plan (1992) and the first volume of a three-volume
implementation plan (1993) have been published. The remaining
implementation plan volumes are expected to be published early in
1994. Much of the scientific work will be done under grants
funded by NOAA; announcements of opportunity have been issued,
grant proposals have been received, and the evaluation and funding
process is under way. Full scale project operation (the Enhanced
Observing Period (EOP)) will take place in 1995-1999. The EOP
will be preceded by a GCIP Initial System Test (GIST) in 1994 and
will be followed by an integration of the GCIP results into the
overall GEWEX project in and after year 2000. GEWEX and GCIP were
described in the January 14, 1992, issue of Eos, Transactions of
the American Geophysical Union, a copy of which is attached.
Additional information about GCIP may be obtained from the
International GEWEX Project Office at the address given in the
article (telephone 202-863-0012), or from the Office of Surface
Water (W. Kirby).
A fundamental strategy of GCIP is to make maximum possible use of
ongoing operational data-collection and dissemination programs and
to maximize coordination and cooperative data sharing with other
related investigations. Several U.S. Federal agencies are
participating in GCIP by supplying operational data for use by the
scientific investigators. Various components of NOAA are
supplying satellite data, weather radar data, and other
meteorological data and analyses, including outputs from
operational numerical weather-prediction models. The Departments
of Agriculture and Energy will be furnishing data on soil types,
soil moisture, and radiant energy propagation and transformation
in the atmosphere and at the surface. The USGS's National Mapping
Division will supply digital cartographic and terrain modeling
data and land-surface satellite data products. The Water
Resources Division and other agencies, such as the Tennessee
Valley Authority, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Agricultural
Research Service (ARS), will supply streamflow data and other
hydrologic and meteorological data.
During the EOP, the GCIP investigators will need relatively
current streamflow and atmospheric data for use in model
calibration, initialization and testing. Annual and cumulative
compilations of the data sets that have been collected will be
produced. At the end of the EOP, a final composite research
quality data set will be produced and turned over to a permanent
archiving agency.
To make the data available to the scientific investigators, a GCIP
data-management system is being developed by the Universities
Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), under the direction
of the GCIP Data Collection and Management Committee (DACOM).
Because of the tremendous volumes of satellite, radar, and model-
output data, the system will make maximum possible use of existing
data centers and archives. For efficient access, however, it is
being considered to copy some of the smaller data sets into a
central GCIP-managed data base. The USGS (and other agencies')
hydrologic data base, because of its highly distributed nature,
relatively small size, and batch-oriented annual data-approval and
publication cycle, is a candidate for copying.
It appears that retrievals from the central WATSTORE data base
will not satisfy GCIP needs for relatively current data.
Therefore, GCIP, UCAR, and the USGS Office of Surface Water (OSW)
and NWIS are beginning to investigate data-transfer strategies
that will make current provisional data available to the GCIP
investigators as rapidly as possible, consistent with USGS quality
control and provisional approval procedures and with minimal
impact on established operational procedures. Districts with
surface-water stations in the GCIP study area will be contacted to
work out mutually acceptable arrangements for making their current
provisional data accessible to GCIP.
The GCIP project and its data management system represent both an
opportunity and a challenge to the USGS as the Nation's lead
agency for hydrologic data collection and management. I support
the efforts of GCIP and UCAR to develop the GCIP data-management
system, and request your office's cooperation in this effort.
Charles W. Boning, Chief
Office of Surface Water
Attachment
WRD DISTRIBUTION: A, B