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Background
ACRE China was part of the initial Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Met Office (MO) and the Chinese Meteorological Administration (CMA)/Beijing Climate Centre (BCC) that evolved in the 2011-2013 period. It is thus well established, and is now an integral part of WP1 within the Climate Science for Service Partnership China (CSSP China).
The focal point within CMA/BCC for the Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) China is Prof. Ren Guoyu, who attended and presented on ACRE China at the 5th and 6th ACRE Workshops in 2012 (Toulouse) and 2013 (Lisbon), plus the ACRE SE Asia meeting at the National University of Malaysia (UKM) in late May 2014. Dr Ren sent one of his students (Ms Yu Yu Ren) to the 7th ACRE Workshop at Environment Canada in late August 2014, and he attended the 8th ACRE Workshop at the University of Chile, Santiago, Chile from the 12th-14th October 2015.
ACRE China activities to date
Pre 2015:
The international, UK and MO contributions to ACRE China over the last couple of years have been with the recovery, imaging and digitisation of historical daily to sub-daily terrestrial and marine data from various sources for stations in countries in and around the South China Sea and from the log books of ships in that region
In China, CMA/BCC has digitised historical sub-daily or daily air pressure records from 6 Chinese stations for the pre-1950 period. These data were provided in June 2014, and include records from Beijing, Shanghai, Qingdao, Guangzhou (Shantou), Harbin and Wuhan stations. Changes in station names or locations are possible – some data have already been digitized for Shanghai (1873-1941, UK) and Qingdao (1898-1914, Deutscher Wetterdienst [DWD] Germany), and efforts were made to find others in the CMA archives. Early year daily temperature data for the 6 stations were submitted to ACRE China in November 2014.
In 2015-2016:
ACRE China has shared and provided CMA/BCC with a mix of various series of historical Chinese data from its ongoing digitisation efforts.
Similarly, digitised historical 19th-20th Century synoptic pressure data are being made available at no cost to ACRE China by Dr Hisayuki Kubota and colleagues in Japan. This effort has particularly helped to filled gaps in the daily China Coast Meteorological Register (CCMR) tabulations of weather variables being undertaken under ACRE China, and is leading to the completion of a full series of CCMR observations from 1873-1941. Dr Kubota has also recently provided ACRE China and Prof. Ren with monthly pressure data from 34 stations in Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria, China, Sakhalin, and Kuril Islands from 1901 to 1941. This also links ACRE China to the new 5-year Japanese KAKENHI Project: Asian monsoon variability during the past 120 years [involving Tokyo Metropolitan, Yamaguchi, Seikei, Nagoya, Kagawa, Kochi, Senshu & Osaka universities; Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC)] and the Japan Climate Data program: http://jcdp.jp/ Dr Kubota, JAMSTEC, now University of Tokyo, was a Visiting Scientist for 6 months in the Hadley Centre from June 2016.
All of these data feed into existing international repositories, including the International Comprehensive Ocean Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS), International Surface Temperature Initiative (ISTI), Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC), and the International Surface Pressure Databank (ISPD). The surface weather observations are then available for assimilation into all global dynamical 4D reanalyses, especially the ACRE-facilitated 20th Century Reanalysis Project (20CR). The current version extends from 1850 to near-present, with various experiments (‘scout runs’) looking to push 20CR back into the early 19th century.
2016 and Future plans
In 2016, an old French publication containing instrumental weather observations from a Beijing station for 1757-1762 was found online, and the scans of its pages were sent to CMA/BCC for digitisation of the surface air pressure, temperature and precipitation data detailed in it. CMA/BCC will soon also provide ACRE China with digitized daily surface air pressure, temperature and precipitation from 19 Chinese stations for the time period from establishment up to 1950. Ancient records of soil moisture (Yuxuefencun, or rain and snow water depth in soil) for 6 stations in China for the time period 1730-1900 will soon be provided by CMA/BCC.
The verification and applications of the 20th reanalysis (20CR) output have been conducted by Chinese scientists involved in ACRE China. There are also plans to work towards high resolution downscaling of 20CR output over the Chinese region via the Met Office PRECIS team. This would vastly enhance the value of 20CR output for the Chinese climate science community, plus wide ranging climate applications and services, policy makers, planners and environmental managers.
An ACRE China regional workshop was held in Beijing from the 23rd - 25th of August 2016, at the request of CMA/BCC. This workshop was hosted by the National Climate Centre (NCC/BCC) of China Meteorological Administration (CMA) and School of Environmental Science of China University of Geosciences (CUG). ACRE China is actively engaging with various National Meteorological Services (NMS) in SE Asia involved in data rescue and digitisation to secure their attendance and participation in the ACRE China regional meeting in 2016. Of the countries engaging with ACRE China and ACRE SE Asia in data rescue activities, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Macau, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, many of them will attend the 2016 ACRE China Workshop.
Linked workshops at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum (HKMM) on the theme of historic (extreme) weather and meteorology and the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) with the ACRE-China 2 regional meeting will take place during the period from the 1-3 March 2017. These workshops are being organised by H.Y. Mok (HKO), Fiona Williamson (NUS/ACRE SE Asia/ACRE China), Rob Allan (UKMO/ACRE/ACRE China) and Guoyu Ren (CMA/ACRE China).
Publications
Williamson, F., Guoyu Ren and Allan, R., 2016: Recovery of Historic Instrumental Weather Observations for China, East Asia and the China Seas. From The Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) initiative ACRE China workshop: Recovery, Digitization and Analysis of Pre-mid-20th Century Climate Observational Data in East Asia workshop 23-24th August, Beijing, China. CSSP China Newsletter. 2, November 2016
Presentations
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