The new GEWEX

As the World Climate Research Programme evolves to a new organizational structure post-2013, GEWEX, the Global Energy and Water cycle EXperiment, is evolving as well.  This talk will expand on the changes underway, and how we plan to address the challenges before us.  As GEWEX has moved beyond the stage of being an experiment, a new name is in order, but how can we change without losing the name recognition?  The WCRP framework suggests that a “land-atmosphere” project should be embraced by the new GEWEX.  The proposal is to have a project called Global and Regional Energy and Water (GREW) with a mission to: Develop improved observational, diagnostic and modeling capabilities for measuring and predicting global and regional energy and water variations, trends, and extremes, such as heat waves, floods and droughts; and providing the science underpinning climate services.  A new set of imperatives for GREW have been developed, and plans are underway to invigorate the associated modeling components, not only of land-surface processes but also atmospheric processes important for climate (clouds, boundary layer, surface fluxes, etc).   Reprocessed GEWEX datasets on precipitation, clouds, and so on, will provide key advances in capabilities with regard to climate variability and change especially using space-based observations.   An outline will be given of the scientific challenges and how to join us in this exciting endeavor.