About CliC

Tinayrebreen.Image: ©Ann Kristin Balto, Norwegian Polar Institute, August 2008

As a core project of the World Climate Research Programme, the "Climate and Cryosphere" project encourages and promotes research into the cryosphere and its interactions as part of the global climate system. It seeks to focus attention on the most important issues, encourage communication between researchers with common interests in cryospheric and climate science, promote international co-operation, and highlight the importance of this field of science to policy makers, funding agencies, and the general public. CliC also publishes significant findings regarding the role of the cryosphere in climate, and recommends directions for future study.

CliC aims to improve understanding of the cryosphere and its interactions with the global climate system, and to enhance the ability to use parts of the cryosphere for detection of climate change. The principal goal of CliC is to:

Assess and quantify the impacts of climatic variability and change on components of the cryosphere and their consequences for the climate system, and determine the stability of the global cryosphere.

In order to achieve this goal CliC has the supporting objectives to:

• Enhance the observation and monitoring of the cryosphere and the climate of cold regions in support of process studies, model evaluation, and change detection and other applications.
• Improve understanding of the physical processes and feedbacks through which the cryosphere interacts within the climate system.
• Improve the representation of cryospheric processes in models to reduce uncertainties in simulations of climate and predictions of climate variability and change.
• Facilitate and support scientific assessments of changes in the cryosphere and their impacts, in particular to the IPCC 5th Assessment Report.

To attain these goals, CliC seeks to develop and coordinate national and international activities aimed at increasing the understanding of four main scientific themes:

• Interactions between the atmosphere and snow and ice on the land surface.
• Interactions between glaciers and ice sheets and sea level.
• Interactions between sea ice, oceans, and the atmosphere.
• Interactions of the cryosphere with the atmosphere and oceans on a global scale.

CliC encourages the use of observations, process studies and numerical modelling within each of the above topic areas. In addition, CliC promotes the establishment of new cryospheric monitoring programmes.

Background Initiative

Howard Cattle -- Chairman, ACSYS/CliC SSG

At their annual meeting, held in Cape Town, South Africa from 16-20 March 1998, the Joint Scientific Committee (JSC) for the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) reviewed the issue of the organisation of research into the Climate and Cryosphere in the WCRP. Key to this review was a paper from the ACSYS Scientific Steering Group (SSG) identifying gaps in our knowledge of some cryospheric processes in the climate system and summarising the various options for the organisation of cryospheric studies within WCRP. This paper was developed by a subgroup at the sixth ACSYS SSG meeting (November 1997), chaired by Professor Roger Barry. As a result of their review, the JSC XIX endorsed the idea of a broader programme on Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) in the WCRP (WMO/TD-No. 929, 1998). As a first step, a Task Group was established to develop a science and coordination plan for CliC for presentation at the twenty-first session of the JSC in March 2000, when the decision will be made on whether to initiate CliC as a full WCRP project. More detail on the background to this can be found in an article by Hartmut Grassl and Victor Savtchenko "Cryosphere and Climate: organisation of the WCRP contribution" in WCRP Newsletter No. 2 and an article by Howard Cattle and Roger Barry "Cryosphere and Climate, The ACSYS Statement" in WCRP Newsletter No. 3.

Continued here.

Background Statement Introduction

An international symposium on 'Antarctica and Global Change: Interactions and Impacts' (1997, Hobart, Australia) proposed that "a WCRP sub-programme on the Antarctic should be formed analogous to the Arctic Climate System Study." The conference on WCRP: Achievements, Benefits and Challenges (1997) further proposed that WCRP should establish an activity to co-ordinate global cryospheric research.

Below is a shortened version of a statement/proposal of the 6th ACSYS Scientific Steering Group (SSG) session in 1997 which was requested to utilize the deliberations and results of the second ACSYS Science Conference on 'Polar Processes and Global Climate' to develop "a comprehensive statement on the overall status of studies of cold climate processes and the role of the cryosphere in climate, together with a proposal for the overall organization/integration of climatically important cryospheric aspects".

A. The need for an integrated cryospheric component of global climate research.

B. Current status of research into the cryosphere and climate.

C. The cryosphere and its impacts.

D.Potential organizational structures and References.