Asian Monsoon Year workshop

The Asian Monsoon Years (AMY 2007-2012)

Background

The Asian Monsoon Years (AMY 2007-2012) is a cross-cutting initiative as part of the International Monsoon Study (IMS), a coordinated observation and modeling effort under the leadership of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). The long-term goal of AMY is to improve Asian monsoon prediction for societal benefits through coordinated efforts to improve our understanding of Asian monsoon variability and predictability. It is believed that coordination and cooperation of individual participating and partner projects will greatly facilitate the efforts to reach this goal.

Specific objectives of the AMY

To better understand the ocean-atmosphere-land-biosphere interactions, the multi-scale interactions among time scales ranging from diurnal, intraseasonal to interannual, and the aerosol-cloud‐water cycle interactions in the Asian monsoon system.
To improve the physical representations of these interactions in coupled climate models, and to develop data assimilation of the ocean-atmosphere-land system in the Asian monsoon region.
To determine predictability of the Asian monsoon on intraseasonal and seasonal time scales, and the roles of land initialization in continental seasonal rainfall prediction.
To better understand how human activities in the monsoon Asia region interact with monsoon and its related environment.

These objectives will be fulfilled through coordination of the ongoing and planned field experiments and modeling projects in the Asian monsoon region which form contributions to AMY.

The AMY stems from grass-root scientific and societal imperatives. It has been endorsed by the Joint Scientific Committee (JSC) of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) as well as the WCRP Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) Project and the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX). It has been identified as a cross-cutting weather and climate activity by WMO World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) Monsoon Panel in the WWRP Strategic Plan. The AMY program is gaining increasing support within the broad community represented by many national projects, operational centers and monsoon research scientists at large.

The planned activity consists of field observations, data management, and modeling components. A Science Steering Committee, International Program Office, and three Working Groups have been set up as an outcome of the first AMY workshop at Beijing on April 23-25, 2007 hosted by State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (LASG), Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP). A draft of this science plan was discussed at the Second AMY’08 workshop jointly hosted by CLIVAR and GEWEX and BPPT, Indonesia at Bali, Indonesia on September 3-4, 2007. This revised version will facilitate the working groups in formulating the Implementation plan.

Participants

AMY integrates existing national and international research programs in the Asian monsoon regions. Currently, AMY has involved 24 national and multi-national projects and a total of 24 participating organizations (Table 2). These include the following national and regional projects:

Japan-JEPP (Tibet, SEA, Thailand, IO, Maritime Continent: HARIMAU), JAMSTEC/IORGC, J AMSTEC/FRCGC, CREST-SEA, ARCS-Asia, PRAISE
China- AIPO, SCHeREX, TORP, SACOL, NPOIMS
India- STORM, CTCZ, IITM/Rain, CAIPEEX
Korea- Japan: PHONE08
USA- JAMEX, SMART-COMMIT, TIGERZ
Chinese Taipei- SoWMEX, TiMREX, EAMEX
China-Japan JICA/Tibet Project
CEOP/WEBS