Overview

WMO RA VI Pilot Regional Climate Centres Network (WMO RA VI Pilot RCC-Network)

Climate relevant processes have strong inter-scale linkages going beyond borders of individual countries. Therefore, and in order to meet WMO Members’ needs, a worldwide 3-level-infrastructure has been defined by WMO: Global Producing Centres for Long-range Forecasts (GPCs), Regional Climate Centres (RCCs) and National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs).

WMO Regional Association VI, spanning from arctic climate conditions in its Northern parts to deserts in some of its Eastern and South-Eastern member countries, includes many different ecosystems and countries in different economic situations. Global-scale climate information provided by GPCs has to be transformed to higher spatial resolution and adopted to serve the many different needs at national levels. Thus the RCC Network in WMO RA VI will work to bridge the gap between the global and national levels.

RCCs are Centres of Excellence that assist WMO Members in a given region to deliver better climate services and products including regional long-range forecasts, and to strengthen their capacity to meet national climate information needs. The primary ‚clients’ of a RCC are NMHSs and other RCCs in a region and in neighbouring areas. RCC responsibilities should be regional by nature and not duplicate or replace services provided by NMHSs.

Furthermore RCCs are an operational regional component of the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) which was proposed by the World Climate Conference 3 in Fall 2009. GFCS implementation and governance structure were finally adopted by the Extraordinary World Meteorological Congress in October 2012. RCCs are a regional element of the Climate Services Information System (CSIS) of the GFCS.

The RCC system in WMO RA VI is being established as network of centres which provide regional level services according to their individual strengths, while making use of as many national level data and products as possible. Today 3 nodes have been established:

• Pilot RCC Node on Data Services (lead: The Netherlands)
• Pilot RCC Node on Climate Monitoring (lead: Germany)
• Pilot RCC Node on Long-range Forecasting (lead: Russia and France)

Each of these nodes is supported by a consortium of NMHSs of the region.

The network approach has been chosen to ensure incorporation of as much competence and know-how as possible of the 50 RA VI Members.

Fig. 1: The consortia of the 3 Pilot RCCs in RA VI (RCC-DS – red triangle; RCC-CM – yellow circle; RCC-LRF – green square).