This is the second of an occasional series of bulletins from the IPCC DDC keeping you informed of progress about the Centre and new developments relating to the availability of scenario information being handled by this IPCC initiative. You are receiving this email as a Registered User of the DDC web site.
The DDC web site is still under development. A preliminary full site should be operational by early May, with further developments through untilJuly 1998. GCM data are still being transferred from the GFDL and CCC modelling centres so we have nothing further to report on that front.
The DDC web site continues to be organised at three levels and you are able to move between these three levels quite freely.
the Gateway 'Blue' pages, which provide an overview and a gateway to the site; the Scenario 'Green' pages, which will contain information about datasets, climate visualisation software, a data download facility and a user support service; the GCM Archive 'Yellow' pages (note: these pages have changed from being Red) from which full monthly GCM time series can be downloaded. Some data for HADCM2 and ECHAM4 are already available from this page, but if you download these files now, make sure that you return to the Green Pages in weeks to come for guidance material and associated scenario information.
We have recently added to the Green site some pages (http://ipcc-ddc.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru_data/examine/have_index.html) about the various datasets that the DDC will be making available. These include the observed climate dataset and the emissions scenarios. The IS92 emissions scenarios used in the Second Assessment Report are now available from here and we have also provided an interpretation of these scenarios in terms of CO2 concentration, global temperature and sea-level, again using a simple climate model used by IPCC in 1995. These results are consistent with those reported by IPCC in Chapter 6 of the WGI report in the TAR.
We are currently working on the non-climatic baseline and scenario information that accompany these IS92 emissions scenarios. The first version of the new IS99 emissions scenarios is being discussed at a meeting in Washington beginning on 27th April. We hope to make these provisional IS99 data available to impacts users (in much the same form as the IS92 scenarios) as soon as is possible to do so after then.
We shall also shortly be agreeing a DDC Data Policy Statement that will govern the terms and conditions of use of the GCM and observed climate data obtained from the DDC and we are working on a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) relating to climate scenario information and application. The first version of the data visualisation software should be running by the first week in May.
All these pages will be added to over the next weeks. The major developments will be notified to Registered Users through these bulletins. Please invite your colleagues who have an interest in this Data Centre to Register and be kept abreast of developments. The IPCC DDC is the primary means by which the IPCC is supporting the use of consistent scenarios in impacts assessments that may be cited in the Third Assessment Report.