RIME Implementation Workshop

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This award will provide funds for the support of a workshop on Antarctic regional-scale synoptic meteorological processes and their representation in numerical forecast models. Its objectives are to assess our current understanding of physical processes at high southern latitudes and to provide a means for formulating specific experiments to generate new information so that necessary parameterizations within numerical models can be tested and improved. The workshop will be held at the National Center for Atmospheric Research on February 4-6, 2003. Nearly every study that addresses issues of global change identifies the polar regions as among those most sensitive to climatic shifts. The Antarctic continent is a particular importance in global change scenarios because of its massive ice sheets and potential impacts on sea level change. In addition, numerous teleconnections between Antarctica and lower latitudes over time scales ranging from synoptic periods to those associated with the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and beyond have been documented in recent years. However a physical understanding of how Antarctic processes are linked to those over the rest of the globe is still lacking on all time scales. A prerequisite for investigating and understanding the links between Antarctica and the rest of the globe is a thorough understanding of regional physical and synoptic processes and transports to and from the continent. Proper representation of Antarctic processes is basic to global change studies, especially since Antarctic transports are strongly tied to local topographic and mesoscale processes that are currently not resolved within global climate models (GCMs). These considerations have been brought together in the Ross Island Meteorological Experiment, a basic and applied research program, designed both to highlight and remedy current gaps in our knowledge of Antarctic synoptic processes.