WP 6 - Dissemination, outreach and capacity building

Objectives

The objectives of this workpackage are to "coordinate with European and international stakeholders", and "to organise the dissemination/outreach activity". The dialogue mechanisms set up in CORE-CLIMAX will provide a forum for providers of EO data and climate researchers to assess the status of available observational records, integrating space data with in-situ records, to establish the foundations for a validated base of EO data for climate research and long time period reanalysis.

Already during the lifetime of the project, CORE-CLIMAX will provide a continuous means for ongoing research projects and other funded activities to better coordinate their efforts. This will take the form of a dedicated website with wiki resources and periodic updates after each major workshop. In particular, we will

As such this workpackage will be split into two tasks:

Task 6.1: Thematic coordinating with international activities

These coordinating activities include the following activities:

CORE-CLIMAX will help to establish best practices for COPERNICUS climate service in:

A digital forum in the form of a website will be established, the information would be organized by ECV and FCDR. Such a deliverable could live longer than the project, and survive to become a part of the COPERNICUS Climate Service. Three areas will be developed: Central COPERNICUS CDR forum; Central CDR/ECV validation forum and Central reanalysis forum. Whenever possible, coordination will be sought with existing digital forums (e.g. www.reanalyses.org) to avoid dilution of efforts and to maximize the audience reached. These forums will provide the CORE-CLIMAX participants with easy exchange and documentation of results and information, and the Commission and other users with a central place to follow the project progresses and provide timely user feedbacks.

Other forms of coordination will be three (3) workshops organised by CORE-CLIMAX and participation in other relevant workshops and meetings of the above mentioned initiatives.

In addition, CORE-CLIMAX will further review the current implementation status for the GCOS ECVs:

Task 6.2: Advisory Board input to CORE-CLIMAX

The Advisory Board consists of senior members closely involved in high level definitions of climate services and the related GCOS requirements and CEOS and space agencies’ responses as well as EU policy needs. External emerging initiatives and opportunities will be given to the CORE-CLIMAX consortium by the AB members, in addition to the existing networking by the consortium members. The input of AB members to the CORE-CLIMAX project will mainly be delivered by participating in the coordination forum workshops.

Output generated by this task will be in the form of 'Policy briefs': 2 paged pdf document to be distributed to policy makers (non-scientific community, hence with adapted language).

Task 6.3: Capacity Building activities

There is a need to provide guidance and expertise, to train people on the use of climate information and its associated uncertainty, and to provide generic tools to build the bridge between the climate information and the users' need. CORE-CLIMAX will provide guidance about what can be done and with whom to users of European climate services and provide capacity building activities to increase the awareness and to create tools and mechanisms for the use of climate services information. In particular, we will coordinate with the COPERNICUS services:

and with ESA CCI projects and EUMETSAT SAFs as well as ECMWF and national climate services to promote their products and their applications in climate change adaptation, mitigation and planning as well as decision making.

Two dedicated training courses will be developed and implemented where one course will focus on the generation of ECVs and validations (using results from WP2,3) and another on the use of these ECVs in reanalysis and applications in climate change detection and attribution services (Using results from WP4,5). The targeted audience for the first training course will be researchers involved in the generation of ECVs/CDRs and will come from all EU countries (e.g. two participants per country). Those for the second training course will be researchers for reanalysis data generation and producers and users of climate services.

Both training courses will be free of charge, and the participants are expected to arrange their own travel and subsistence costs. CORE-CLIMAX will provide all necessary training materials free of charge and provide all other necessary assistances. The selection mechanism will be based on a screening of basic knowledge in generation of ECVs/CDRs for the first course and the relevance in using reanalysis products for climate services for the second course. Announcement of the training courses will take place at least a half year before the start of the respective course and will be advertised on the CORE-CLIMAX web site and through the EUMETSAT and ECMWF member countries channels as well as at other related meetings and workshops.

All participants will be registered at the digital forum and will be updated with new developments. During the life time of CORE-CLIMAX, the project office will also coordinate meeting specific requests from course participants (e.g. data sources, and tools).