Two upcoming meetings, to be held at the Richard Assmann Observatory
in Lindenberg, Germany, aim to initiate the GCOS (Global Climate
Observing System) Reference Upper Air Network (GRUAN). The first
meeting, February 25, 2008, will be the first face-to-face meeting of
the GCOS Working Group on Atmospheric Reference Observations. This
Working Group reports to the GCOS Atmospheric Observing Panel on Climate
and is charged with facilitating the establishment of the GRUAN and
liaising with other organizations. The second meeting, February 26-28,
will be the GRUAN Initiation Meeting and will involve a larger group of
scientists, site operators, managers, and representatives of
international and national organizations who will seek agreement on key
issues involving the initiation of the observational network.
NOAA participants include: Dian Seidel (OAR/ARL), Howard Diamond
(NESDIS/NCDC), Bill Murray (OAR/CPO), Matt Menne (NESDIS/NCDC), Mitch
Goldberg (NESDIS/STAR), Ellsworth Dutton (OAR/ESRL), and Holger Vomel
(University of Colorado/CIRES and OAR/ESRL).
The GRUAN has been identified as a high priority in the GCOS Implementation Plan. NOAA and GCOS have provided
leadership for the GRUAN effort by organizing workshops to define
requirements for the GRUAN (Boulder, February 2005) and to identify
potential instrumentation, station locations, and network and data
management needs (Seattle, May 2006). A GCOS
report provides results of these workshops.
The GRUAN will address long-recognized unmet needs in the global observing
system by providing long-term, continuous, high-quality in situ
atmospheric profile observations for climate monitoring, calibration of
satellite observations and products, and climate process studies. The
GRUAN is an important contribution to the Global Earth Observing System
of Systems.
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