2602 WORLD CLIMATE RESEARCH PROGRAM
4.81C, at which the risk is for frostbite in at least 5%
of a population. This is based on the work of
Danielsson.
See also
Operational Meteorology. Weather Prediction: Se-
vere Weather Forecasting.
Further Reading
Bluestein M and Zecher J (1999) A new approach to an
accurate wind chill factor. Bulletin of the American
Meteorological Society 80: 1893–1899.
Court A (1997) Comfort temperatures. McGraw-Hill
Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. vol. 4,
pp. 217–218. McGraw-Hill.
Dixon JC and Prior MJ (1987) Wind-chill indices F a
review. Meteorological Magazine 116: 1–16.
Driscoll DM (1985) Human health. In: Houghton DD (ed.)
Handbook of Applied Meteorology, pp. 778–814. New
York: Wiley.
WIND PROFILERS
See RADAR: MST and ST Radars and Wind Profilers
WORLD CLIMATE RESEARCH PROGRAM
W L Gates, University of California, Livermore, CA, USA
Copyright 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Introduction
The World Climate Research Program (WCRP) seeks
to promote international coordination of those aspects
of climate research wherein such coordination is
needed or desirable. The WCRP promotes the devel-
opment of a scientific understanding of the global
climate system in order to determine the extent to
which climate change may be predicted on all scales of
space and time, including the effects of human
activities on such climate changes. The WCRP
was established in 1980 by the World Meteoro-
logical Organization (WMO) and the International
Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). These foun-
Osczevski RJ (2000) Windward cooling: an overlooked
factor in the calculation of wind chill. Bulletin of the
American Meteorological Society 81: 2975–2978.
Quayle RG and Steadman RG (1998) The Steadman wind
chill: an improvement over present scales. Weather and
Forecasting 13: 1187–1193.
Siple PA and Passel CF (1945) Measurements of dry
atmospheric cooling in sub-freezing temperatures.
Reports on Scientific Results of the United States
Antarctic Service Expedition, 1939–1941. Pro-
ceedings of the American Philosophical Society 89:
177–199.
Steadman RG (1971) Indices of wind chill of
clothed persons. Journal of Applied Meteorology 10:
674–683.
Steadman RG (1995) Comments on ‘‘Wind chill errors’’.
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 9:
1628–1630.
Wyon DP (1989) Wind-chill equations predicting
whole-body heat loss for a range of typical civilian
outdoor clothing ensembles. Scandinavian Journal
of Work, Environment and Health 15(supplement 1):
76–83.
ding sponsors were joined in 1993 by the Inter-
governmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of
UNESCO.
Organization and Activities
In pursuance of its objectives, the WCRP has organ-
ized a number of international research and observa-
tional projects on selected aspects of the atmosphere,
ocean, sea ice, and land surface as interacting compo-
nents of the physical climate system. The first of these
was the Tropical Ocean and Global Atmosphere
(TOGA) project, organized in 1984 and completed
in 1994. TOGA’s focus was on the large-scale air–sea
interactions in the tropical Pacific Ocean and
their relation to the El Niño phenomenon, and
included the deployment of an array of instrumented

buoys in the equatorial Pacific warm pool. These
data made it possible to use dynamical models for
the prediction of the El Niño and its effects on the
higher-latitude atmospheric circulation. Although
designed as a research project, TOGA provided a
major breakthrough in our understanding of the
behavior and influence of tropical sea surface temper-
ature anomalies. This success has led to the mainte-
nance and expansion of the TOGA observational
network on an operational basis, and to routine
seasonal prediction of El Niño and its worldwide
effects.
The overall scientific strategy of the WCRP is
the responsibility of a Joint Scientific Committee
(JSC), while implementation of the program is
carried out by a Joint Planning Staff (JPS) in the
Geneva headquarters of the World Meteoro-
logical Organization (WMO) in coordination with
International Project Offices (IPOs) in selected
participating nations.
The WCRP presently has five active research
projects, in addition to a broad program in support
of numerical modeling. These projects are the Global
Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX), the
World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE),
the Arctic Climate System Study (ACSYS), the
Study of Stratospheric Processes and their Role in
Climate (SPARC), and the Climate Variability and
Predictability Study (CLIVAR). The WCRP also
maintains active working groups on numerical climate
modeling and experimentation. The principal activi-
ties of each of these projects and groups are briefly
described below.
The Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment
Project (GEWEX)
The central objectives of GEWEX since its establish-
ment in 1989 have been the description and under-
standing of the radiative energy transfers in the
atmosphere and the variations of the global hydro-
logical cycle. GEWEX has assembled multiyear global
data of the observed monthly distribution of water
vapor, cloudiness, precipitation, land-surface hydro-
logical properties, and radiative fluxes from both
satellite and in situ measurements. These research-
quality data are of unique value in the design and
evaluation of global climate models. GEWEX has
also undertaken field studies of the water and
energy balance in selected regions of the world
(including the Mississippi, Mackenzie and Amazon
river basins, the Baltic Sea, and the Asian monsoon
area), with the aim of improving the parameteri-
zation of hydrological processes in large-scale climate
models.
WORLD CLIMATE RESEARCH PROGRAM 2603
The World Ocean Circulation Experiment
Project (WOCE)
The observational phase of WOCE began in 1990 with
the objective of measuring the detailed three-dimen-
sional structure of the global ocean over the decade of
the 1990s. In an internationally coordinated hydro-
graphic survey, WOCE has measured physical and
chemical water properties over depth along an
intersecting global network of paths using ship-
board, moored, and drifting instrumentation, supple-
mented by satellite observations of the topography
of the sea surface. These latter data were first avai-
lable with the launch of the TOPEX/Poseidon
satellite altimeter in 1992, and provide a quasi-
synoptic view of the variations of the global sea
level in response to wind and temperature at the
surface. At the same time, ocean currents at and below
the surface are measured by a global network of
instrumented floats whose drift can be monitored by
satellite.
During the closing phase of WOCE (scheduled
to end in 2002), emphasis will be placed on the
analysis of the WOCE data set and on the develop-
ment of both basin-wide and global ocean models
capable of reproducing at least the major features
of the observed circulation. The WOCE modeling
experience is expected to contribute significantly to
the improvement of models of the coupled ocean–
atmosphere.
The Stratospheric Processes and Their Role
in Climate Project (SPARC)
Complementing the atmospheric and surface focus of
GEWEX and the oceanic focus of WOCE, the SPARC
project was established in 1992 with the objective of
relating the chemical, radiative, and dynamical proc-
esses in the stratosphere to the tropospheric and
surface climate. Specific SPARC initiatives include
studies of stratospheric ozone, stratospheric aerosols
and water vapor, stratospheric temperature and cir-
culation, gravity-wave dynamics, and stratosphere–
troposphere interaction. As attention is extended to
the stratosphere (and beyond), these SPARC projects
will contribute to the more satisfactory representation
of atmospheric chemistry in comprehensive climate
system models and their use in climate change simu-
lation. SPARC is also involved, in cooperation with the
WMO’s Global Atmospheric Watch, in the monito-
ring of ultraviolet radiation (UV-B) at the Earth’s
surface.
The Arctic Climate System Study Project (ACSYS)
In ACSYS the WCRP is seeking to understand
the unique role of the Arctic in the global climate
2604 WORLD CLIMATE RESEARCH PROGRAM
system. Since its establishment in 1993, ACSYS has
established long-term monitoring programs for the
distribution of Arctic sea ice and for elements of
the meteorology, hydrology, and oceanography of
the Arctic basin. Using these data, ACSYS has
fostered the development of sea ice models that
include the effects of ice dynamics and that permit
the more accurate simulation of ice extent and
behavior.
Although a regionally focused program, ACSYS has
provided liaison with other research activities in the
Antarctic involving the monitoring of sea ice in the
Southern Ocean. This coordination will be extended
in a new WCRP project called Climate and the
Cryosphere (CLIC) which will succeed ACSYS in
2002, in which all aspects of the global cryosphere will
be considered, including snow cover, glaciers, ice
sheets, and permafrost.
The Climate Variability and Predictability Project
(CLIVAR)
CLIVAR is the newest WCRP project, established in
1995. The overall objectives of CLIVAR are to
understand the nature of climate variability on
seasonal, interannual, decadal, and centennial time
scales, and to determine the extent to which climate
changes on these scales can be predicted. CLIVAR
is thus concerned with the coupled atmosphere–
ocean system, whereas the other WCRP projects
are concerned with the atmosphere or ocean
separately. On the seasonal to interannual time
scale, CLIVAR is focused on the El Niño Southern
Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon and its pre-
diction by coupled ocean–atmosphere models,
while on the decadal time scale CLIVAR’s focus
is on the diagnosis and simulation of coupled circu-
lation modes in the North Atlantic and North Pacific
regions.
On longer time scales, CLIVAR’s principal
concern is on the possible future behavior of
the climate system. To this end, CLIVAR has pro-
moted reconstruction of the climate observed
during the last century or so, and the simulation
of future climate changes in response to anthro-
pogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and
aerosols. In this latter area, CLIVAR supports the
periodic assessments of climate change made by
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), and cooperates with the paleoclimate
research community in the assembly and diagnosis
of proxy climate data over the last several thousand
years.
Modeling Working Groups
Since its inception, the WCRP has supported a
Working Group on Numerical Experimentation
(WGNE), in cooperation with the WMO Commission
for Atmospheric Sciences, for the purpose of promot-
ing the development of improved atmospheric models
for both weather prediction and climate simulation.
To this end, the WGNE coordinates an international
Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP)
in which the performance of models is systematically
examined in comparison with reality. To play a
corresponding role with regard to coupled atmos-
phere–ocean models, the WCRP established a Work-
ing Group on Coupled Modeling (WGCM) in 1997.
This group is focused on the development and
diagnosis of coupled ocean–atmosphere models for
both seasonal prediction and longer-term climate
simulation.
Future Challenges
Since its inception, the WCRP has successfully
coordinated the work of its international participants,
and has contributed to an improved understanding
of many aspects of climate. In particular, the WCRP
has actively cooperated in the development of
plans for a comprehensive and sustained global
climate observing system to acquire the data needed
to validate climate models and to document
climate change. The WCRP has also played an
important role in the development of an inter-
national climate modeling infrastructure in order to
promote model improvement and the application
of results.
Future challenges to the WCRP and its component
projects are seen as the development of models of the
coupled physical, chemical, and biological compo-
nents of the climate system, the development of the
scientific basis for the prediction of regional climate
anomalies on seasonal to decadal time scales, and the
promotion of research on the detection of ant-
hropogenic climate change. These challenges are
themselves seen as preludes to the establishment of
operational systems for the delivery of useful
climate information, including the prediction of
climate change impacts and the integrated assessment
of societal responses. Meeting these challenges
will require the WCRP to cooperate closely with the
International Geosphere Biosphere Programme
(IGBP) of ICSU and with the International Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change
Program (IHDP) of ICSU and the International Social
Science Council.
 WORLD CLIMATE RESEARCH PROGRAM 2605

See also Further Reading

Climate: Overview. Climate Prediction (Empirical Gates WL (1998) Proceedings of the Conference on the
and Numerical). Climate Variability: Decadal to World Climate Research Programme: Achievements,
Centennial Variability; Glacial, Interglacial Variations; Benefits and Challenges. WMO/TD-No. 904. Geneva:
Nonlinear Aspects; North Atlantic and Arctic Oscillation; World Meteorological Organization.
Seasonal to Interannual Variability. General Circu-
lation: Models; Overview. Numerical Models:
Methods.