44^th Session of the WCRP Joint Scientific Committee was organized on 8-11 May 2023 at Brussels, Belgium and online. The JSC meeting assessed progress made towards WCRP's goals and plans for the future of WCRP.

Day 1 of the meeting consisted of remarks from three sponsors of WCRP (WMO, ISC and IOC-UNESCO) and local host; the updates and discussion on the strategic initiatives and issues, including the new and emerging science issues, the updates from three WCRP Task Teams (Global Precipitation Experiment, Cycles and Budgets, and Climate Intervention); as well as the future of WCRP modeling activities. Day 2 focused on the reporting and discussion of the six WCRP core projects and four lighthouse activities (LHA) of WCRP, as well as the engagement with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS). Day 3 included half-day breakout sessions to discuss the connections between core projects and LHAs, plus half-day plenary sessions on reporting from breakout sessions, WCRP Academy LHA, WCRP Science and Implementation Plans, and the future carbon footprint of WCRP. The final day of the meeting include the specific discussion on 2023 WCRP Open Science Conference, WCRP Branding, future collaboration with GCOS, WWRP, GAW, Future Earth and other partners (APN, Copernicus, GEO, GOOS, OOPC, PAES, SOLAS, US GCRP and YESS).

Drs Sonya Legg and Francois Engelbrecht, co-chairs of CLIVAR Scientific Steering Group, Dr. Regina Rodrigues, co-chair of CLIVAR Atlantic Region Panel and WCRP My Climate Risk LHA, and Ms. Li from ICPO attended the meeting. Sonya made a presentation on behalf of CLIVAR, highlighting the progress and achievements of CLIVAR over the past year, workshops and conferences in 2022/2023, future plans and activities, linkage with other WCRP core projects and LHAs, interactions with  WCRP Academy, etc. The JSC highly commended the impressive number of activities organized and achievements made by CLIVAR in the past year, with specific comments and recommendations including the following:

• WCRP Secretariat will take the lead to collect science highlights/new findings evolved from meetings and workshops organized by core projects and WCRP LHAs.
• Keep track of the CLIVAR publications, include CLIVAR acknowledgement.
• Strengthen collaboration with ESMO and CMIP 7 through OMDP and GSOP on fine-scale modeling, ocean reanalysis, deep Argo, etc. 
• Continued cooperation with CliC through SORP and NORP, and planned collaboration among CliC, CLIVAR and GEWEX on Asia Monsoons.
• Potential opportunity between SPARC and CLIVAR to collaborate more closely on joint activities, particular through CLIVAR Climate Dynamics Panel and SPARC’s DynVar activity.
• Future cooperation with Ocean Observing Co-Design Programme and My Climate Risk LHA to involve fisheries and other end users in climate extremes and MHW topics.
• Potential cooperation with EPESC LHA on coupled circulation changes, MHW, Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) and etc.
• Potential linkage between Safe Landing Climate LHA and MHW RF on risks to biosphere and limits to tolerance.
• Continued collaboration with MCR LHA to build and implement ocean-related hubs.
• Digital Earths LHA to cooperate with OMDP to engage km-scale ocean and sea-ice communities, and to work with GSOP on data assimilation.
• Status and plans for ICPO in transition.

Documents and presentations for the WCRP JSC-44 are available online.