CAWSES

Climate And Weather of the Sun-Earth System

A new SCOSTEP Program for 2004-2008

Strategy of the CAWSES Program

In general, it is important that a new program thoughtfully matches its goals to SCOSTEP's capabilities, and enhances rather than interferes with or duplicates existing programs. Envisioned in an early stage of CAWSES, is an activity to collect data records to document with increasing fidelity various aspects of the Sun-Earth system. Data records will be quality controlled to enable subsequent research to determine real variations separately from those resulting from data problems. A particular challenge will be the extraction of trustworthy geophysical trends from well-calibrated data sets. These data sets will then be disseminated via the World Wide Web to the international solar-terrestrial research community. Also, SCOSTEP will continue to cooperate with the World Data Center system of ICSU and to use its services.

Along with the data intensive phase, the capability of using physically based models for assimilating observed data and deriving enhanced outputs for segments of the solar-terrestrial system will be assessed. This is a required step before physical models can be combined to form an effective end-to-end model of the solar-terrestrial system.

Finally, it is of primary importance that participants in all SCOSTEP disciplines should welcome and support the program and participate in it from planning through implementation and utilization. In this way, the program will mobilize SCOSTEP researchers to work together to understand variability throughout the entire solar-terrestrial system.

CONTACT US:
CAWSES Office, Center for Space Physics, Boston University, 725 Commonwealth Ave. Boston, MA 02215 USA; Phone: 617/353-5990; FAX: 617/353-6463;