Draft Terms of Reference

  1. To advance our basic understanding of atmosphere-ocean climate dynamics using observations and models and to determine the role of climate dynamics in shaping climate variability and change on seasonal to centennial time scales. Specific activities will, in the first instance, be organized around three areas:
    1. Weather-climate interaction across different spatio-temporal scales,
    2. Ocean basin to ocean basin and tropical-extratropical teleconnections,
    3. Development of predictive theories of climate dynamics.
  2. To organize international workshops, sessions at international conferences, review/perspective articles, articles in more assessable formats on atmosphere-ocean climate dynamics.
  3. Where appropriate, to coordinate the running and analysis of numerical weather and climate model experiments addressing topics in atmosphere-ocean climate dynamics. A key component will be the evaluation of models using re-analyses and archives of atmospheric data.
  4. To periodically review the panel areas of focus.
  5. To meet on an approximately 18-month basis.
  6. To report progress to the CLIVAR SSG as required.
Liping Yin