CLIVAR Components

Initially, The CLIVAR programme was organized in three streams:

CLIVAR-GOALS

examines the variability and predictability of the Global Ocean Atmosphere Land System on seasonal-to-interannual time-scales, building on the successes of the TOGA programme, by:

developing observational capabilities to describe seasonal and interannual climate variability, including continuation of the TOGA observing system;

further developing models and predictive skill for SST and other climate variables on seasonal to interannual time scales around the entire global tropics;

building understanding and predictive capabilities of the interaction of monsoons with the Indian Ocean, ENSO and land surface processes;

understanding climate variability and predictability arising from the interaction between the tropics and extratropics;

exploring the predictability of extratropical seasonal to interannual climate variability induced by the interaction of the atmosphere with oceans, land surface processes, and sea-ice processes and developing means to exploit any such predictability.

CLIVAR-DecCen

determines the mechanisms of variability and predictability of climate fluctuations on Decadal-to-Centennial time-scales with a special emphasis on the role of the oceans in the global coupled climate system by:

describing and understanding the patterns of global decadal-to-centennial climate variability in the instrumental, paleoclimatic, and model records;

extending the records of climatic variability by concerted efforts of data recovery, reanalysis of existing atmospheric, oceanic and paleoclimatic data, finding new paleoclimatic indices, and instituting new oceanographic monitoring sites;

developing and implementing appropriate observing, modelling, computing, and data collection and dissemination systems needed to describe, understand, and predict global decadal variability;

identifying and studying the oceanic regions and processes, such as water mass transformation regions, strong boundary currents and return path ãchoke points", through which the ocean and atmosphere interact to produce decadal-to-centennial climate variability.

CLIVAR-ACC

studies the response of the climate system to Anthropogenic Climate Change by:

developing understanding, modelling and predictive capabilities of the response of the climate system to the anthropogenic increases in radiatively active gases and changes in aerosols;

identifying the patterns of anthropogenic modification to the mean state and to the variability of the climate system;

using the understanding of natural climate variability derived from the other two CLIVAR component programmes as a baseline for detec ting the trends and signatures associated with increases in greenhouse gases and the effects of other anthropogenic changes.