Summary of Comments from Water Cycle Study Group Town Hall Meeting, held at AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, 12/13/99
Tony King: What is the distinction between Goals 1 and 2?
Peggy Lamone (NCAR): "You need to address the implementation problem. What aspect of this is going to deal with evaluation of models using field data? You might want to consider something like the Carbon Plan’s proposed network for model testing and evaluation."
Bob Grossman (U Colorado): "You should clarify the definition of monitoring vs observing. Monitoring is applicable when you know the problem, and essentially is a tool for controlling a process. Observing has to do with better understanding process. Consider, for instance, the availability of cheap water vapor proiflers, and other options made available by better instrumentation, which could help advance the observation problem."
Jim Shuttleworth (U Arizona): "What is the scale of the effort in terms of funding -- how big a program are we taking about?"
Howard Wheater (Imperial College, UK): "What will the global vs regional emphasis be, and what is international component?"
Liz Weir: "The group should think about a priority list of parameters to be observed and predicted?"
Vijay Gupta (University of Colorado): "You need to clarify the definition of predictability."
Cathy Wilson (Los Alamos): "What are the logistics of community participation, how will the community be involved? Will the report outline, draft, etc be made available on a web site?"
Hubert Morel-Seytoux (retired, Colorado State University): "There is a history in the land hydrology community of failing to audit hydrologic prediction skill. – How well are we doing? Are we getting any better? There is no accepted hydrologic skill score, so we don’t know if we’re getting better or worse."
John Dracup (UCLA): "Water is now a commodity traded on the Chicago Board of Trade, has the group considered private involvement?"
Commentor unknown: "A range of space and time scales must be considered in Goals 1 and 2, there should be systematic analysis of those ranges."
Terry King: "Is science (as opposed to policy) intended to be the focus of this initiative?"
Soroosh Sorooshian (University of Arizona): "You need to bring the concerns of user groups from other fields (economics, human dimensions, etc.) into the deliberations."
Tom Dogani (University of Arizona): "What is the scale and focus"
Cathy Wilson (LANL): "Is the level of detail appropriate? Do you need grand challenges with measurable objectives and progress. i.e., "by the end of the decade we will ____?"
Hubert Morel-Seytoux (retired, Colorado State University): "How are you distinguishing between state variables and forcing functions?"
Bob Grossman (University of Colorado): "At some point you should have a retreat with users, the private sector, and other relevant parties for the purpose of determining what they would be willing to do (essentially a Commitments Conference")."
Commentor unknown: "How will the Science Plan address problems of data-poor areas of the globe?"