| Abstract |
The World Meteorological Organization's Global Cryosphere Watch (GCW) is an international mechanism for supporting all key cryospheric in-situ and remote sensing observations. To meet the needs of WMO Members and partners in delivering services to users, the media, public, decision and policy makers, GCW provides authoritative, clear, and useable data, information, and analyses on the past, current and future state of the cryosphere. GCW includes observation, monitoring, assessment, product development, prediction, and research. It provides the framework for reliable, comprehensive, sustained observing of the cryosphere through a coordinated and integrated approach on national to global scales to deliver quality-assured global and regional products and services. GCW organizes analyses and assessments of the cryosphere to support science, decision-making and environmental policy. To meet these objectives, GCW implementation encompasses:
Requirements: Meet evolving cryospheric observing requirements of WMO Members, partners, and the scientific community, by contributing to the WMO Rolling Review of Requirements (RRR) process;
Integration: Provide a framework to assess the state of the cryosphere and its interactions within the Earth System;
Standardization: Enhance the quality of observational data by improving observing standards and best practices for the measurement of essential cryospheric variables;
Access: Improve exchange of, access to, and utilization of observations and products from WMO observing systems and those of its partners;
Coordination: Foster research and development activities and coherent planning for future observing systems and global observing network optimization.
The observing component of GCW is a component of the WMO Integrated Global Observing System (WIGOS). Through WIGOS and the WMO Information System (WIS), GCW will provide a fundamental contribution to the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). GCW will organize analyses and assessments of the cryosphere to support science, decision-making, environmental policy and services through, inter alia, its foundational support to the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS). |