Scientific Motivation

An important aspect of climate research, concerned with climate dynamics, involves the study of large-scale phenomena, processes, and mechanisms of climate variability and change on seasonal to centennial time-scales. Climate dynamics should provide the basic concepts, terminology, and phenomenological explanation that can be used to characterize regional to hemispheric climate variability and change. A common way of studying climate dynamics is to define ‘modes’ of variability that may be described in statistical and/or physical terms. Such modes may influence climate outside their region of existence via remote teleconnections. Interest in climate dynamics is growing as the quantity and quality of new observational datasets and numerical modeling outputs are increasing. Yet, the understanding of climate dynamics has not yet been extensively applied in new research areas such as long-term regional climate change assessment.

The overarching Panel obective is to advance our basic understanding of atmosphere-ocean climate dynamics using observations and models and to determine the role of climate dynamics in shaping climate variability and change on seasonal to centennial time scales. Specific activities will, in the first instance, be organized around three areas

• Weather-climate interaction across different spatio-temporal scales,
• Ocean basin to ocean basin and tropical-extratropical teleconnections,
• Development of predictive theories of climate dynamics.

CLIVAR-CFMIP Working Group: TROpical Pacific SST Warming PatternS (TROPICS)

Draft Terms of Reference

1. To advance our basic understanding of atmosphere-ocean climate dynamics using observations and models and to determine the role of climate dynamics in shaping climate variability and change on seasonal to centennial time scales. Specific activities will, in the first instance, be organized around three areas:
   1. Weather-climate interaction across different spatio-temporal scales,
   2. Ocean basin to ocean basin and tropical-extratropical teleconnections,
   3. Development of predictive theories of climate dynamics.
2. To organize international workshops, sessions at international conferences, review/perspective articles, articles in more assessable formats on atmosphere-ocean climate dynamics.
3. Where appropriate, to coordinate the running and analysis of numerical weather and climate model experiments addressing topics in atmosphere-ocean climate dynamics. A key component will be the evaluation of models using re-analyses and archives of atmospheric data.
4. To periodically review the panel areas of focus.
5. To meet on an approximately 18-month basis.
6. To report progress to the CLIVAR SSG as required.