PMIP Workshop 4

The 4th PMIP International meeting will be held at New Hall, Cambridge, UK, from June 22nd to 26th, 2002. New Hall is a small modern college close to the centre of Cambridge and the river Cam. The city of Cambridge is in the south east of England, 50 miles north-east of London. It is well served by road and rail links, and is within an easy distance of the major London airports.

Objectives

Following the conclusions of the third PMIP workshop in Canada, the goals of the meeting are to discuss the next phase of PMIP in terms of intercomparisons and working groups. This will include:

1. To decide if we should start a new intercomparison project for the mid-Holocene and LGM using coupled ocean-atmosphere and/or atmosphere-ocean-vegetation models. We need to discuss the goals of such model-model and model-data comparisons, the best simulations to reach these goals, possible revisions to the boundary conditions, and what the different groups are ready to do.
2. Defining possible additional (or alternative) intercomparison simulations. These may include fresh-water hosing experiments, or new simulations using various combinations of atmosphere only, slab ocean, and vegetation (coupled or prescribed).
3. Discussion of possible additional PMIP simulations for the early Holocene and glacial inception, which were the two main periods coming out of the previous meeting. For these periods, we need to discuss if we are ready to launch an intercomparison project, or if we should organise more informal working groups.

We anticipate the meeting to consist of a couple of days of presentations related to progress since the last meeting, and then a couple of days focussed on the design of the new set of PMIP simulations, and the requirements for new or expanded datasets.

Please fill free to send us any comments you have on the next PMIP phase, and the possible structure of the meeting. Prior to the workshop, we will aim to circulate some of the ideas for the simulations.

Schedule

Financial support

We currently do not have financial support for the meeting, and the likely total cost of accommodation, food etc is likely to be about £500 ($700). We are seeking sponsors for the meeting and hope to be able to reduce this amount.

Travel expenses to Cambridge will be at the charge of the participants.

Deadlines

Please send a confirmation of participation, by competing the attached registration form, as soon as possible and no later than 31st March.

We will need an abstract and confirmation of dates of arrival and departure by 30th April.

Contacts

Paul Valdes

Pascale Braconnot, Sandy Harrison, Chris Hewitt, and Sylvie Joussaume.