The IGCP 565 Project

Work Plan

Year 1:

a) Overall planning of project activities: develop a detailed prospectus for a series of five annual workshops with a conceptual description of the overall goals, details on the specific goals of the individual workshops, specification of the anticipated output for each workshop, and identification of target participant groups.

b) Initiate steps to ensure continuous satellite gravity missions: proposed specific activities include: (1) a workshop addressing the mission requirements, options for the design of the missions, options for the deployments and mission operation, and participation in the science and operational mission teams. With respect to short-term actions and an immediate GRACE-follow-on mission, particular emphasis will be on the participation of emerging space agencies in Africa and Asia. For more longer term missions, the options for high accuracy gravity missions will be considered both from a scientific and technological point of view. The workshop output will be a summary report with specific recommendations for mission design, operation, and operational products, including specific recommendations (and possibly agreements) for the implementation of a GRACE follow-on missions; (2) a dialog with the GEO Task WA-07-02 (Satellite Water Quantity Measurements and Integration with In-situ Data) or its follow-on Task and CEOS with the goal to discuss a virtual constellation for water cycle monitoring. If considered appropriate, a formal proposal for such a virtual constellation will be prepared and submitted to CEOS and GEO.

Year 2:

Science of geodetic monitoring of the hydrological cycle: a workshop will review the state of the art in understanding the quantitative fluxes in the global water cycle, consider the relation between geodetic observations and mass changes in the main reservoirs of the water cycle, and clarify the open science questions that the geodetic observations can help to reconcile. Issues to be addressed will also include the modeling of the signals of water mass redistribution in the geodetic observations, the improvements in data processing and geophysical modeling inherent in geodetic analysis that are required in order to preserve the unbiased water mass signals in the geodetic observations and products, the integration of in situ and geodetic remote sensing products, and the relation between the geodetic signals and mass redistribution in the terrestrial hydrosphere. Besides a workshop summary report, the output of the workshop will be several review and research/position papers published in proceedings or an special issue of an appropriate journal.

Year 3:

Determination of mass transports in the hydrological cycle from geodetic observations: a workshop will focus on the inversion of geodetic observations for surface mass changes and the relation of these changes to parameters of the global water cycle. Key issues will be comparison of models and algorithms, cross-technique and cross-model validation, including meteorological and climatological models of the water cycle at regional and global scales. The inter-model differences in existing models of the water cycle or part of it will be assessed, and based on comparison with the inverted mass redistributions the sources of the discrepancies will be identified. Anticipate output will be a summary report and proceedings.

Year 4:

Integration of geodetic observations and products in models of the hydrological cycle: a workshop will focus on algorithms for assimilation of geodetic observations and products into models of components (terrestrial, atmosphere, ocean) of the global water cycle and assess the improvements in terms of accuracy, spatial and temporal resolution, and predictive capabilities of the models. The goal is to identify products from either space geodetic observation or a combination of these with hydrological models that support the needs of regional water management. On regional scale, at least three regions will be considered specifically: Southern Africa, Australia, and the Southwest of the USA. For these regions specific projects are either underway or proposed, and the results of these projects will be presented at the workshop. A Workshop summary report together with proceedings will make the results accessible for the last workshop.

Year 5:

Improving regional water management in Africa and Asia on the basis of geodetic water cycle monitoring: a workshop will bring together representatives of regional water management authorities and representatives of the research and observation communities involved in the project activities with the goal to assess the requirements of regional water management, in particular in developing countries, in terms of products derived from space-geodetic observations and the associated models. The goal is to define a set of products in terms of parameter, spatial and temporal resolution, accuracy, and latency, which can be made available in support of regional water management. The Workshop summary report will be an important input for the work in GEO, GGOS, CEOS and other relevant providers of data and information products.