In memoriam Linda Mearns

It is with great sadness that we from the CORDEX community have learned of the passing of Dr. Linda Mearns from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR). She was a dedicated geographer and climate scientist who was highly engaged with CORDEX since the beginning. She also led the development of the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP), the precursor to North American CORDEX. For many years, Linda served as a Point of Contact for CORDEX North America and worked hard to organize CORDEX-CMIP5 for the region. She also contributed through presentations and valuable discussions at several CORDEX conferences, including a talk on NA regional modeling at the Trieste conference in 2023 (at 8 h 15 min 30 sec).

In April 2024, NSF NCAR honoured Linda with the Mearns Symposium to celebrate the magnitude of her career impact.

Her wit, wisdom, dedication, and mentorship have left a lasting impact on all who had the privilege of knowing her, and she will be missed by many.

If you would like to share your own remembrances of Linda, please feel free to add them to this document over the next week (please note that you will need to first request edit access, but please do not hesitate to do so).  It will be published on the NSF NCAR Colleagues We Will Miss page in the near future.

New Chair and Vice-chair of the WCRP JSC

Professor Tim Naish (New Zealand) and Professor Cristiana Stan (USA) have been elected as the Chair and Vice-chair of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Joint Scientific Committee (JSC).

The elections for the two positions concluded on 27 January 2025. Read more about the new Chair and Vice-chair at the WCRP website.

Four new Flagship Pilot Studies endorsed!

The logo of CORDEX flagship Pilot Studies

We are happy to annnounce that so far four new Flagship Pilot Studies have been endorsed and will start during 2025. The new FPSs have the below titles. (Clic the link to read more about each FPS)

Australasia: Sub-Hourly Extreme Precipitation (SHEP)

Macaronesian Archipelagos: Convection Permitting projections focused on island processes (FPS-I-Mac)

Island Climate – Pacific (IC-Pac)

Enhancing climate downscaling at km-scale in sub-tropical South America using machine learning CPRCM-CMIP6 emulators

 

You can also read more about the Flagship Pilot Studies.

The report from the hybrid CORDEX Science Advisory team meeting is now published

In September the CORDEX Science Advisory Team met in Santander, Spain and online for an extended meeting to move forward in the restructuring of CORDEX, including selecting new SAT members and defining responsibilities. There was also an open part of the meeting that aimed to involve the CORDEX community in the discussions on the newly established Task Forces, new scientific topics, challenges, collaborations with various WCRP activities as well as with non WCRP initiatives and future plans.

Read the report here

Care for SEA Megacities and CORDEX SEA special session at the IVCEES 2024

At the 4th International Vietnam Conference on Earth and Environmental Sciences (iVCEES-2024) in Quy Nhon, Vietnam during 26-28 November 2024, CARE for SEA Megacities and CORDEX-SEA had a special session.

The aim of the session was to coordinate and discuss updates on the empirical statistical downscaling (ESD), and land surface physics-based downscaling (LSP-DS) activities under the CARE for SEA megacities project and to coordinate and discuss updates on the CMIP6 downscaling activities of CORDEX-SEA and identify opportunities for collaboration with similar initiatives in Southeast Asia and also to provide a platform for engagement between climate researchers and stakeholders.

You can read the report from the session here:

Happy Holidays and thank you all for 2024!

The International Project Office for CORDEX would like to thank the CORDEX community for all the valuable work during 2024 and also wish all of you:
Happy Holidays!

The CORDEX office will be unmanned during the period of 21 December to 1 January.
For urgent matters regarding CORDEX data access please have a look at our website under Data access and/or our FAQ
For other CORDEX matters please take a look at the general FAQ or contact one of our Points of Contact (POCs) or one of our Science Advisory Team (SAT) members.
For more WCRP-related matters you can turn to the WCRP secretariat