In May 2004, a concept paper/proposal was presented to the Integrated Global Observing Strategy (IGOS) Partners for an IGOS Theme on Cryosphere.  The concept paper was prepared by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) Project in collaboration with the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), and in consultation with several IGOS partners.  The proposal came from CliC and SCAR representing the two IGOS-P Partners WCRP and ICSU.  The IGOS Partners were asked to endorse the proposal and to approve the development of a full-fledged Cryosphere Theme document .  The concept paper is available in the Documents section of this site.

The response was favorable. The IGOS Partners agreed that the cryosphere is very important for IGOS and encouraged the proposers to proceed.  The next major step was to generate a theme report.  Theme reports review the needs for observational data and higher-level products, analyse the current state and future of these observations, and propose feasible objectives for the development of the observations which represent a consensus between most important data users and data providers.  On the basis of the consensus, the theme teams propose a plan of actions and developments. These actions must have clearly specified objectives, implementing organisations, deadlines, an indication of needed resources and of readiness by the data providers to commit the resources.  The IGOS Partners consider the report and decide whether it can go to the implementation phase.

Three theme development workshops were held. The first workshop took place in March 2005 in Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada. The workshop involved scientists and observationalists mostly from the North America. It reviewed the outline and scope of the document and agreed on the approach. A wide group of contributors to the Theme has been identified for most of the report chapters. The second workshop was held 24-25 April 2006 in Yokohama, Japan.  The third workshop was held 16-18 October 2006 at ESTEC (ESA) in The Netherlands.

The first full draft of the Theme Report was submitted for approval and presented at the IGOS Partners meeting in Paris on 30 May 2007 (IGOS-P-14). It was approved and accepted as a new IGOS theme.

The next step is implementation, i.e., ensuring that our recommendations are put into action. What needs to be done? Click here to find out.