The World Modelling Summit for Climate Prediction was hosted by ECMWF from 6 to 9 May 2008, and fully funded through wide-ranging international sponsorship.
Jointly organized by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP), and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the goal was to address the threat of the consequences of global climate change by developing a strategy to revolutionize climate prediction for the 21st century. It was largely based on identifying synergies between NWP and climate prediction problems.
140 participants from 19 countries, representing the global weather and climate community, attended the summit. During the opening session, introductory talks were given by distinguished speakers such as Michel Jarraud (Secretary General of WMO), Rajendra Pachauri (Chair of the IPCC, recorded), Jeff Sachs (Earth Institute) and Chris Llewellyn-Smith (former Director of CERN). This was followed by a number of presentations related to the main themes of the summit, given by speakers from both the meteorological and computing communities. They covered themes which included the current status of weather and climate modelling and strategies for seamless prediction; strategies for next-generation modelling systems; prospects for current high-end computer systems; strategies for model evaluation and experimentation; and strategies for revolutionizing climate prediction, i.e. how to enhance human and computing resources and what could be the requirements and possible organizational frameworks in the future. These themes were discussed in more depth during the breakout group sessions on the third day of the summit, and on the final day a draft of the summit declaration was developed in plenary session.
Overall it was felt that the summit was a very successful event in many respects, not least as an important step in bringing together the weather and climate community with a view to achieving the common goal of providing society with reliable regional predictions of climate change at all timescales, necessary to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies. The Modelling Summit statement can be found here.