Working Group Guidelines

WOCE Pacific Workshop


Working Group Guidelines

  1. General Working Group Guidelines

    1. Each day's meeting will have a specific focus, to be decided in advance by the working group leader with input from the group. We will be making daily decisions about how to proceed on the following days.

    2. There will be time for short presentations relevant to the particular focus by working group members who wish to do so, and ample time for discussion. The working group leader will arrange a schedule for these presentations in advance of the meeting and inform the members.

    3. These sessions are primarily intended for discussion. The size of the working groups is a little too large for completely free discussion, so at the discretion of the working group, smaller groups might break off to discuss particular items.

    4. Some working groups might meet together depending on the topic.

    Abstracts are available online at http://www-ocean.tamu.edu/WOCE/Workshop/Abstracts/abstract_list.html.

    Presentation guidelines: keep them short (5-10 min), and focused on your particular point. For the discussion, think about ways to expand your work through collaborations or other methods; think about how your work can contribute to the overall WOCE objectives.

    Think about ways to interact with your colleagues, to expand your own work and theirs. Contact them ahead of time if it makes sense to you, so as to make good use of your time at the workshop.

  2. Science Working Groups

    Objectives:

    1. Advancement towards the WOCE goals and objectives, of defining and understanding the general circulation, ventilation and mixing, and its temporal variability; heat transport and divergence; improving ocean models.

    2. Facilitate each scientist's ability to carry out personal science objectives, through exchange of ideas and provision of a variety of methods and data sets.

    Desired results from the science working group sessions: Our success will be measured ultimately by refereed publications. The abstracts are the scientific record of the workshop.

    Each working group should consider preparing a short report along the following lines:

    1. Highest priority: ideas for a group of papers for a special journal issue. These might be grouped with papers from another working group. We will be working with a major journal (JGR or one of the Elsevier publications). A suggested time frame would be useful.

    2. Ideas for reviews, monographs, book chapters, or books, to appear with similar publications on other WOCE topics, in a special WOCE series to be distributed by a major publisher, possibly in conjunction with the special journal issues.

    3. Suggestions to go to the technical groups, WOCE Data Products Committee or the Data Assembly Centers: data set availability, data products, model-data and model-model comparisons, data assimilation.

    4. Suggestions for follow-on meetings (small or large) if they seem useful, for instance during an evening at a scientific conference that most people would be attending.

  3. Technical Working Groups

    Objectives:

    1. Decide which data products, software, data publications etc. would be of most use to observers, modelers and assimilators. If these involve a series of climatologies, determine the best way to produce the climatologies.

    2. Devise a series of model-data and model-model comparisons which would best and most practically test and improve Pacific modeling. Consider differences between coarse, medium and high resolution models. Consider the practicality of an Ocean Model Intercomparison Project (or Ocean Model-Data Intercomparison Project) and a timetable.

    Desired results from the technical working group sessions:

    Each working group should consider preparing a short report along the following lines:

    1. Climatology group: plans for preparation of data products, climatologies, atlases (printed and/or electronic), involvement of DACs and SACs, data assimilation.

    2. Data assimilation group: discuss current directions and general problem of assimilating the different types of WOCE data, including hydrography. Participate actively in the climatology and model-data discussions.

    3. Model-data group: what tests would be most useful to compare and advance Pacific basin and global models? Is an OM(D)IP a useful concept? Uses of data assimilation for testing?

    4. Suggestions for follow-on meetings (small or large) if they seem useful, for instance during an evening at a scientific conference that most people would be attending.

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