JCOMM Expert Team on Sea Ice and Global Digital Sea Ice Data Bank
The Joint WMO/IOC Commission for Oceanography and Marine Meteorology
(JCOMM) is now a reality.
The historic first session of JCOMM took place in Akureyri, the "northen capital"
of Iceland, from 19 to 29 June 2001. Substantial support for the meeting, as well as warm
and generous hospitality, was provided by the Icelandic Meteorological Office.
While the membership of JCOMM is still growing, at the time of the session the
Commission had approximately 250 members from 122 Members of WMO and Member
States of IOC. The session was attended by 113 participants from 42 Members/Member
States and 11 international organizations.
JCOMM has adopted a new form of structure which has four main Programme
Areas, each with its own sub-structure in the form of expert teams or groups. Each
Programme Area has its own Programme Area Coordinator, who chairs the specific PA
Coordination Group. All Programme Areas report to a Management Committee
consisting of the two co-presidents, the 4 PAC`s, 3 additional experts, and senior
representatives of GOOS, GCOS and IODE.
The Data Programme Area (OPA) oversees and coordinates a variety of existing
and upcoming JCOMM observation programmes, and establishes links as necessary or
appropriate to external programmes.
The Data Management Programme Area is responsible for all data management
issues regarding JCOMM data and will work closely with the subsidiary bodies of IODE
and CBS and related experts to implement the programme. In addition, the new JCOMM
in situ Observing Platform Support centre (JCOMMOPS) facilities assistance and
guidance to JCOMM data users, as well as observing platform managers.
The Services Programme Area has responsibility for a variety of JCOMM
services, including maritime safety services (particularly in the context of the Global
Maritime Distress and safety System, GMDSS), waves and storm surges, sea ice and sea
level services (under the Global Sea Level Observing System, GLOSS).
Work within the Capacity Building Programme Area will be undertaken largely
within the guidelines laid down by the JCOMM Capacity Building Strategy document.
One major task is to seek additional and external funding for its planned activities.
The Commission agreed on the need to establish an Expert Team on Sea Ice of
the Services Programme Area with appropriate members and terms of references.
JCOMM has adopted a work plan for the first intersessional period 2001-2005,
including the plan for the Exper Team on Sea Ice.
During the session the Commission expressed its appreciaton to the Steering
Group for the Global Digital Sea Ice Data Bank (GDSIDB) for the considerable and very
valuable work accompolished during the period after CMM-XII. The Commission in
particular noted with satisfaction that cooperation among sae-ice experts from the
Russian Federation, Finland, Sweden , Canada, Denmark, Japan and USA had resulted in
the inclusion , within the GDSIDB, of newly digitized data sets for Arctic and Antarctic
areas, including data sets from the Sea of Okhotsk, Baltic Sea and Canadian Arctic Area.
It was noted with appreciation that Argentinian Navy Hydrographic Service had started to
submit information on sea ice observations to the GDSIDB`s centers (NSIDC, Boulder,
USA and AARI, St.Petersburg, Russian Federation), as well as the offer by China and
Australia to contribute data to the GDSIDB. The Commission noted with interest that a
special report on the availability of sea ice data for the Caspian and Black Seas and the
Sea of Azov was prepared and discussed durin the eight session of the Steering Group for
the GDSIDB.
The Commission noted with appreciation that members of the GDSIDB had
agreed to make efforts to prepare historical sea ice data for the Sea of Bohai from 1952 to
the present (State Oceanic Administration, China); the Baltic Sea for 1980-1998 (BSIM)
and for 1960-1982 (German Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH)); the
Antarctic for 1970-1990 (AARI and Australia through the ASPeCT programme).
Additional sea-ice data sources were identified as Denmark for Greenland waters in the
20-th century; Chile and South Africa for the Antarctic; Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan
for the Black, Azov and Caspian seas.
Special pages describing historical sea ice data were published on the NSIDC and
AARI Internet servers:
http://www.aari.nw.ru/gdsidb/gdsidb_2.html (AARI, St.Petersburg, Russia)
http://www.dmi.dk/pub/gdsidb_mirror/content.html (mirror of AARI site at DMI)
http://www-nsidc.colorado.edu/NOAA/index.html (NSIDC, Boulder, Colorado,
USA)
These pages can be accessed directly from the Programme Areas section of the
WMO Marine Programme web page.
The Commission, recognising the direct value of the GDSIDB to the WCP and
WCRP, as well as to services and other sea-ice activities of Members concerned,
recommended that WMO and IOC should continue to support the valuable work of the
Steering Group for the GDSIDB during the coming intersessional period and agreed the
proposed project objectives for this period. These are included in the overall Commission
work plan.
The Commission noted with interest that special ad-hoc working groups were
designated by the Steering Group for the GDSIDB to develop a new format
COUNTOUR-2 to standardize the international exchange of operational sea ice data for
electronic sea ice charts. The Commission expressed its appreciation to the experts from
SMHI and AARI for the development of appropriate amendments and extensions to the
SIGRID and SIGRID-2 formats, which were designated to preserve the accuracy of the
original data in the Baltic Sea Ice Data Bank (BASIS) while converting them to the
SIGRID formats.
The Commission noted the results of research undertaken by CIS experts, under
the Arctic Sea Ice Regime Shipping System (AIRSS), to identify ice decay from radar
back scatter. The Commission agreed that as a result of this work, appropriate
amendments to the nomenclature for coding sea ice decay should be developed during the
next intersessional period.
Finally under the Sea Ice agenda item, the Commission noted with appreciation
the important work being undertaken by regional and international groups, such as the
BSIM, the International Ice Charting Working Group (IICWG) and the Electronic Chart
Display Information System (ECDIS). As a good example of this collaboration is the
article published in the World Climate News Report and based on a contribution by John
C. Falkingham from the IICWG and Vasiliy Smolyanitsky from the JCOMM ETonSI It
agreed that future collaboration should be continued between the Expert Team on Sea Ice
and these groups, and requested the chairman of the Expert Team and the Secretariats to
arrange for such collaboration, as appropriate.