Met Office Telecon 4

October 22, 10.00 a.m., Nick Rayner, Simon Good and Chris Merchant

The User Requirements Document is now publicly available in draft for comment until next Monday. Next week it will be finalized by SG and NR and approved by CM for submission to ESA.

Next telecon will be to kick off the Product Specification Document on 12 November, at 10.00 a.m.

Leicester Telecon 1

15 October 2010 by phone, Chris Merchant, Gary Corlett

GC has scoped out the data request to ECMWF, with some minor queries. The 3 month lag time for ERA interim was discussed, and we agreed it was not problematic for the 6 month demonstration, since the data collection for the demo is expected to start October 2011, whereas the system run will not be before Aug 2012.

Aerosol comparison data will comprise TOMS (most of 1991 to 2010, but missing some of 1994 to 1996), MACC (post 2002), and (for stratospheric aerosol) SAGE II (under consideration). 

The issue of rights to redistribute ECMWF data within the RRDP has not yet been resolved.

Collection of match-up data is ongoing, but download speeds from Meteo France are slow. A telecon with Pierre to discuss plans for MSG-1 SEVIRI is needed.

GC will visit Brockmann in November, and telecon is planned during visit.

Before next telecon: Draft DARD will be distributed round project team; PVP Table of Contents will be defined.

DONM Tue 2 Nov 15.30.

Project Team Telecon 1

13 October 2010 by Skype
Chris Merchant, Hugh Pumphrey, Paul Spinks, Gary Corlett

AGENDA

1. Overview of active WPs and progress towards deliverables

2. Project communications and reporting arrangements

- update on monthly reporting cycle with ESA from PS

- are WP-specific telecons + blog summaries adequate for "science leadership"?

3. Project templates and reference documents

4. Project web site

- PS to summarize recommendations from co-location

- quick survey of opinions about what we want on there

5. Guidelines from co-location

- each colleague involved in other drafting teams to give status in 1 minute


1. CM explained that in WP 101 (Analysis of Requirements) the Met Office have drafted the URD with the survey results and other findings. CM has reviewed this and returned comments, which Nick and Simon are reflecting on before distributing more widely for comment. 

CM stated that at Edinburgh WP 203 (Radiative transfer basis) work has started with Claire testing RTTOV10; Meteo France have confirmed they are going to standardize also to RTTOV10 one formally released.

GC addressed WP 103 (Data access). He has updated ESA on findings to date as requested. The data needs for ECMWF data have been fully compiled now, and he has sought comments from David Tan. It is not clear whether ECMWF will want to respond to our individual request or to a consolidated request from ESA, and this may cause delay. GC pointed out the data gap in TOMS aerosol for 93 - 96, and it is not clear what other data could be sourced to bridge this. Regarding stratospheric aerosol, HP undertook to explore options for gridded data set around the Pinatubo period from limb sounders. Sample pages for DARD will be sent to CM for comment next week. DARD will be fully drafted by 1 Nov by Karen Veal and circulated round team and ESA for comment. May be revised later in light of PSD and URD.

GC described WP 201. Draft ToC will be with CM by end October for comment and implementation of Edinburgh component.

WP 202 (Multisensor Matchup Dataset) GC said content had been reviewed with CM (see previous blog entry) and data collection has started with the Meteo France MDs for Metop and SEVIRI. Next downloads will be in situ data sets and passive microwave. CM undertook to follow up again regarding AVHRR GAC. GC needs a sample, so if not forthcoming from CM-SAF, CM will ask Mark Filipiak to send sample. 

Question was raised whether data sets should now start to be collected at Eddie (the Edinburgh cluster). Basically, yes, but this is not yet set up. CM will follow this up.

2. PS explained the monthly communications routine agreed with ESA. Towards the end of each calendar month, he will solicit reports from leaders of active work packages, and compile into a draft monthly report. On the first Wednesday of each month, the project team telecon will review that draft and discuss AOB. Once updated, the report will go to ESA, and then PS, CM and Craig Donlon will hold a telecon, noting any actions that emerge.

PS explained that since in this project there is split project management and science leadership, actions needs to be treated more flexibly (not solely by project manager). He proposes to investigate a "living" document (e.g., Google doc) to be available online as the repository from actions arising both from project meeting (PS to manage) or science leader telecons (CM to manage). 

3. The project's document template is essentially under test with GC and the Met Office at present, and will be circulated thereafter. The powerpoint template will be distributed soon. PS will give instructions for numbering of project documents. The reference document list will be in common across all documents and will be visible online. Present spreadsheet will be sent to GC to update with new RDs from DARD work; thereafter it is expected to evolve more slowly, and will be maintained by Emma Danby at Edinburgh, along with the acronym and science reference documents.

4. PS explained that Hugh Kelliher is exploring use of the the ESA web site template. Although implementation would represent significant extra work beyond our proposal, he is considering whether the benefits are such that it is worth pursuing. In the meantime, this puts a blight on creating web links for project common documents, etc, on the existing web site (in case the effort is wasted). CM said that as an interim measure, documents could easily be deposited on the project ftp site (ftp://esa-sst-cci.org).

5. The status of drafting teams' efforts were briefly reviewed.

Decisions summary:
1. HP will explore simple data sets for stratospheric aerosol pre and post Pinatubo.
2. UoL will send CM DARD sample and he will comment and return.
3. CM will chase CM-SAF AVHRR GAC sample, and/or ask Mark F to provide NOAA GAC sample to GC.
4. CM will ensure system for collecting data on Edinburgh cluster gets up and running.
5. PS will trial an online document to act as Actions Database.
6. GC will extend the RD list previously created by PS.
7. PS and all: Templates and common documents will be placed on ftp site in interim..

Met Office Telecon 3

1 October 2010, by skype/phone, Nick Rayner, Simon Good, Chris 
Merchant
Topics: WP 10130 on User Requirements 

Today is the final day for responses to the User Requirements questionnaire to be included in the analysis exercise that SG will start next week. To date there have been 106 complete responses, and about twice as many partial responses. SG has also held a further discussion session with users interested in seasonal forecasting and SST variability; the main message from this session was the importance of compatibility of satellite-era SST from the CCI project and longer term historical SST records. We discussed approaches to presenting the survey results: SG has lots of good ideas. 

SG expects to have the draft report available by 8 Oct. CM will review it rapidly before it goes out to the project team and to those surveyed who indicated a willingness to review it. Following guidelines that emerged from the recent co-location meeting, comment will also be solicited from other international scientific bodies (although replies may take longer).

Practicalities of document template and referencing need to be followed up.

Actions/decision:
1. SG will send draft Requirements report to CM on 8 Oct
2. CM will review and return ASAP
3. SG will distribute report for comment more widely
4. CM will follow up with project manager status of templates and reference-list document