The Team has arrived and first met at ISSI-BJ on Monday 27th of February and joined the Chinese Colleagues participating in this Asian-European working group on Himalaya-Tibetan-Plateau (HTP) focusing on snow. Anna Yang has introduced the ISSI-BJ institute and its history, focus and scope, mentioning the ISSI-BJ Team reporting and acknowledgement agreements. 

Yvan Orsolini and Gianpaolo Balsamo, leading the initiative for this international coordination, have given the welcome to the Team Members composed of Chinese-European scientists that have travelled to Beijing to participate to this first meeting. A variety of expertise is collected in the room:

  • Land surface, model & data assimilation
  • Land-related predictability 
  • Use of EO-observation for snow

The main scope to initiate a collaboration and dwell into the impact of the cryosphere on weather and climate with particular focus on the HTP and the role of snow. The week has seen alternating excellent talks with discussions on HTP challenges from observability and process representation point of view involving both physics and dynamics and methodology to handle and assimilate EO data. Short tutorials on snow data handling (EO and in situ) for assimilation purposes were proposed. The meeting did last one full week until Friday 3rd of March and reached a good level of planning for common activities that can be relevant for future publications and projects. Shared resources are common to the team and their institution (prior requesting access) and stored under a login-protected area.