Year of Tropical Convection (YOTC)

The realistic representation of tropical convection in global models is a long-standing, grand challenge for both numerical weather prediction and climate projection. Incomplete knowledge and practical issues in this area disadvantage the modeling and prediction of prominent phenomena of the tropical atmosphere across a wide range of scales. Notable in this regard are the InterTropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Tropical Biennial Oscillation (TBO), monsoons and their active/break periods, the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), subtropical stratus, upper-ocean properties, easterly waves, and tropical cyclones. The diurnal cycle and cloudmicrophysical processes are involved at a basic level. Furthermore, as a result of various convection-wave interactions, tropical convection has far-reaching affects stratospheric-tropospheric exchange, the large-scale circulation of the upper-atmosphere, and the extratropics. To address the above challenge, WCRP and WWRP/THORPEX have initiated a year of coordinated observing, modeling, and forecasting with a focus on organized tropical convection, its prediction, and predictability (Year of Tropical Convection, YOTC). The intent is to exploit the vast amounts of existing and emerging observations, the expanding computational resources and the development of new, high-resolution modeling frameworks. This focused activity and its ultimate success, will benefit from the coordination of a wide range of ongoing and planned international programmatic activities and collaboration among the operational prediction, research laboratory and academic communities. The timing, focus-year approach, and integrated framework of YOTC will leverage the most benefit from recent major investments in Earth-science infrastructure. Another motivation is to inspire a new generation of scientists to tackle key challenges facing Earth-system science. In some respects, YOTC is a modern equivalent of the tropical components of the First GARP Global Experiment (FGGE). Global databases of satellite data, in-situ data, and high-resolution model analysis and forecasts will be constructed. Together with accompanying research, the aim of YOTC is to advance basic knowledge, diagnosis, modeling, parameterization, and prediction of multi-scale tropical convection and two-way interaction between the tropics and extra-tropics with emphasis the intersection between weather and climate.