Precipitation is one of the most important weather, climate, and hydrological variables with direct connection to society and the environment. The observation, modeling, and prediction of precipitation over land or over the ocean remains one of the frontiers in climate research, including hydroclimate extremes. The urgency to make progress in this field also becomes increasingly obvious as freshwater availability, with precipitation being its primary source, appears to decline around the world.
Motivated by the recognition that, despite some progress over the past few decades (e.g., through WCRP core projects, such as GEWEX, CLIVAR, SPARC and CliC), the required improvement of precipitation predictions has been hampered by major gaps in observing, understanding, and modeling precipitation. GPEX, as a new WCRP Lighthouse Activity, will provide a unique opportunity to make progress in understanding phenomena and processes critical to precipitation and will accelerate progress in improving precipitation prediction by leveraging existing WCRP projects and community capabilities in observation, modeling, research, and conducting new and focused activities, including planning for the 'WCRP years of precipitation.'
WCRP Secretariat Contact: Hindumathi Palanisamy (
Photo: John Coppi (January, 1992).