The most recent set of global climate model projections
have been submitted to, and are being analyzed by, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the publication of their Fourth
Assessment Report in 2007. PICES Working Group 20 was created to
perform an evaluation of these projections for the North Pacific
and its marginal seas, and to compute products, such as ensemble
averages, that would assist PICES groups like the Climate Forcing
and Marine Ecosystem Response Task Team (CFAME), in their analysis
of climate effects on marine ecosystems, and ecosystem feedbacks
to climate. In this workshop, presentations and discussions will
focus on ongoing research that addresses the terms of reference
of the new working group, and on strategies for future work that
is needed to fill the gaps. Presentations related to the direct
analysis of global climate projections and the calculation of ensemble
averages; to results from higher-resolution regional ocean and coupled
atmosphere-ocean models that are forced by, and take their boundary
conditions from the IPCC models; and to the development of local
and regional data sets (e.g., SST, river flow, sea ice cover) based
on either model projections or historical observations, will all
be welcome. The development of work/action plans, liaisons with
other PICES groups and outside organizations (e.g., CLIVAR), and
future activities will also be discussed.
Invited speakers: Curtis Covey (Program for Climate
Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison, Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, U.S.A.); Michio Kawamiya (Frontier Research Center for
Global Change, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology,
Japan); and Keith Rodgers (AOS Program, Princeton University, U.S.A.)