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AVI 080 Project "ACROSS" |
"Analyzed Climatology of Rainfall Obtained from Satellite and Surface data
for the Mediterranean Basin"
Minutes of the 2nd Meeting
Ankara (Turkey), April, 11th - 13th, 1996
The meeting was called to discuss about project development, with particular
reference to the following items:
The following scientists and technical staff from the involved research
instituitions, participated to the meeting:
University
of Genova - Hydraulic Institute: University
of Bristol: Middle
East Technical University (Ankara): University
of Jordan: As already discussed in the start-up meeting, though the original project was designed with the participation of a Syrian partner, during the contract negotiation, the University of Aleppo resigned from the project. This caused the project to start only on July 1st, 1995 with a lack of contributions.
Finally in January / February a new Syrian partner was identified in ICARDA (International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas), one of the 16 Centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, involved in variuos cooperation, training and research projects in the Syrian country and abroad.
The procedure for the signature of the contract is running at the date of this meeting and though the Coordinator suggested to set the "Operative Commencement Date" on April 1st in order to allow the participation of Dr. Oweis, scientist in charge for ICARDA, he wasn't able to attend the meeting.
Each laboratory presented the work undertaken during the first semester concerning the Work Area "Collecting ground-based rainfall data and development of remote sensing techniques and graphical tools":
With reference to the collection of data results other specific issues emerged during the presentations, the following relevant issues have been identified for further discussion:
Identification
of revised boundaries for the study area
The discussion was undertaken on the basis of three criteria to be folllowed
for a final decision:
Finally, it was decided that the study area will cover the following
regions:
The sea-rainfall maps are produced by UB on the basis of satellite data calibrated by means of the Nimes meteoradar and cover the whole Mediterranean and Black Seas, except for a 50 Km wide strip along the coast in which the retrieval algorithms do not perform well due to the presence of a significant percentage of land territory in the footprint area. Such a strip will be covered by developing dedicated procedures, to be designed and implemented in coooperation between UG and UB, which will take into account both ground based and remotely sensed data.
Products will be produced with reference to the geographic window defined by the following coordinates: 29° N - 48° N ; 12° W - 45° E.
Design
of a suitable monitoring strategy for ground-based data
In the following a summary of the raingauge data collected at the date of this meeting is reported:
No raingauge data, except for NCDC dataset, were collected from:
This point has been widely discussed during the meeting with reference to the activity to be undertaken by ICARDA within the project.
On the basis of economical and technical considerations, a suitable monitoring density has been valued as:
Period
of data collection
Due to the non homogeneous availability of data for years 1995-1996, the period of observation has been identified as 1978-1994 comprehensive, plus 1995 if actually available.
Sources
of data and role of ICARDA
On the basis of the situation delineated in the previous paragraph:
Training
and mobility actions
Two periods for training and mobility actions have been scheduled within the project:
Design
of final products and deliverables
The final atlas of rainfall climatology will be organized as follows:
SSMR period (1978-1987) Monthly average maps 12
Total Annual maps 10
SSM/I period Single months maps 94
(1988-1994) Monthly average maps 12
Total Annual maps 8
The production of further maps concerning the uncertainty of data - either in terms of the amount of rain depth in a given period or in terms of location of confidence contour lines - is foreseen. A final decision on the form and quantity of such maps have to be taken before the end of next meeting taking into account the identified solution for the coverage of the 50 km strip of high uncertainties along the coast-line.
The map support will be a shaded-relief map of in identified study window produced by UG on the basis of a 30'' DEM available in public domain, and distributed by NOAA's NGDC (National Geographic Data Center) via Internet.
As anticipated in the start-up meeting, the 3rd AVI 080 meeting will take place in
Draft scientific progress reports to be contributed to EC and ARTM were presented by each lab to other project participants during the discussion of the 1st year activity. In a few days the final version will be sent to the Coordinator, who will collect them in a unified layout - with a unified cover page proposed and approved during the meeting by all partners - and will be in charge to transmit it to the Commission.
At the end of May each partner will send to the Coordinator a draft copy of the first year reports (scientific and financial parts), following the guidelines established by EC and ARTM. During the Bristol meeting they will be discussed and, eventually, modified / integrated so as to be able to produce the final version in due time (before July 31st).
By contract, the ACROSS Consortium will call an "End of Project Open Seminar where all participants in related projects within the AVICENNA Programme will be invited to contribute to the discussion and evaluation of the results" (Technical Annex to the Main Contract). The scientific topic for this Workshop will be "Rainfall monitoring in the Mediterranaean Area" organized in 3 days conference. The location should be central with respect to the Mediterranean, probably in Italy or Greece, and during the next meeting the Coordinator will present a draft scientific / organizative image in order to discuss all details and to be able, to start the procedure (announcements on scientific journals, contact all partners in order to arrange the participation of guest scientists, ecc.) immediately.
The Coordinator will support the participation of two researchers from each lab of the Consortium. The participation of researchers and experts from outside to the project is also envisaged.
Before July 31st all contractors will present, through the Coordinator, to EC and ARTM the "Management Account" (the statement of annual expenditures), to be accompained by the "Management Summary" prepared by the Coordinator. The amount to be stated by each contractor will be at least 30% of the budget (article 4 of the Main Contract) in order to obtain that the second payment (corresponding to 40% of the budget) is not reduced.
These documents will be presented using the forms distributed during the 1st Meeting in Savona: it is necessary to follow carefully the instructions annexed to the forms. The partners have been invited to contact the coordinator for any problem and clarification.
A few problems were highlighted with reference to the exchange rate to be applied (the statement will be in ECU): the final agreement was to send to the Coordinator before the end of May a draft version of the "Management Account" in order to face in due time any specific problem which might come out.
