29-31 October 2014, Santander SPAIN
Download the PDF of the latest version of the Agenda (21 October 2014)
Overall schedule
Day 1
Background activity to be completed by end of morning tea: have a large sheet on the wall of a two-axis graph; spatial scale versus temporal scale. Ask people to plot where they think are the generalized limits of actionable information for decision makers as derived from GCMs, RCMs and ESD (in different colours). For ~35 participants this should give us a 100+ point scatter plot of crowd-sourced wisdom.
Opening procedures / introductions
Opening talks (Bruce, Clare, Bill, and to be decided):
- Scope the distillation dilemma from the perspective of relevance to users, history and evolution of this concept, intended objectives and outcomes, and the emerging issues of ethics or providing data to society (possibly report on elements of the Ethics of climate services white paper draft).
- How this relates to the WCRP GCs
- Examples of data versus information challenges drawn from each community
- User experiences in dealing with the M5S data diversity.
TEA BREAK
First 3 of 5 key note talks from representatives of the GCM, RCM, ESD, OBS, and “User” communities
20 minutes + at least 10 minutes discussion for each talk. The terms of reference for the talks are to address:
- The nature of the community, structures and activities
- What advances have been made in the last 10 years on developing defensible and robust scale-relevant information to the decision-making community
- What are the leading foci of current research / activities / initiatives
- Perspectives on what science weaknesses limit the interpretation and societal relevance
LUNCH
Last 2 of 5 key note talks.
Open discussion
TEA BREAK
Briefing on 1st BOGs: four groups representing GCM, RCM, ESD, OBS communities.
Task is to explore the question: If you forget about the other sources, and stay only within your science domain, then what approaches could be valuable research avenues that would address the following:
- separate out sources of uncertainty (structural, error, natural variability, knowledge limits, etc)
- develop user relevant metrics of skill that would help a user evaluate your data product - going beyond the traditional maps/plots; e.g. co-behaviour of user-relevant processes on different time scales
- distill the M5S products (e.g., scenarios, trends, plausible ranges of change, methods, resolutions) through the approaches of exclusion, amalgamation, or signal
Break into groups
DINNER
Evening homework for BOGs to prepare a plenary report back
Day 2
Plenary report back
Discussion
Briefing on 2nd BOGs: four groups that mix the communities.
The focus is now on the confusion to the user from seeing mutli-method multi-scale products communicating different messages. Task is to explore the question: If you wanted to address the multi-model multi-method multi-scale mix, how could the different communities collaborate on new research that is agnostic about the data source, in order to:
- develop user relevant metrics of skill that would help a user evaluate the mix of data products
- distill the multi-method data-set product through the approaches of exclusion, amalgamation, or signal
- Handle the multi-scale / resolution incompatibility
TEA BREAK
Break into groups
LUNCH
Plenary Report back
Discussion
Briefing on Carousel activity
4 stations on GCM, RCM, ESD, and Obs. The task is to start formulating
- research priorities within each community
- research priorities across communities
- articulating succinct, concise, single focus, and tractable science questions within each research priority
Carousal rotation: 60, 15, 15, 15 for each stage plus time for people to actually move
DINNER
Evening homework: prepare a report on each station’s outcomes
Day 3
Opening talk from an invited “User’s” perspective - on the proceedings so far
Report back from each carousel station
Discussion
TEA BREAK
Presentation by the organizers of a distillation of the ideas into a set of proposals / statements on ways forward (including writing a short paper to a high profile journal)
Open discussion
Conclusion of decisions
End of Workshop
LUNCH