The IROWG is the fourth permanent Working Group of the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites (CGMS), co-sponsored by CGMS and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It's focus is on the exchange of experiences in the exploitation of Radio Occultation (RO) data, in particular for operational use. RO is an important information source for Numerical Weather Prediction models, being an effective bias correction and climate benchmarking reference due to its calibration free nature. The IROWG will also foster the development of standard software for operational and scientific use as well as maintain standard datasets for processing harmonization and validation.

The format of this workshop follows that of other CGMS working groups, with a conference first followed by dedicated sub-working group meetings that formulate recommendations. These are collected in a final report and are presented at the next CGMS meeting. For this first workshop we are pleased to join the OPAC-4 GRAS-SAF Climate Conference, 6-10th September, 2010. Friday afternoon (10th of September) and Saturday (11th of September) are dedicated to the IROWG 1st workshop.

Preliminary agenda:

Introduction to CGMS, IROWG Terms of Reference, Subgroup overview and sign up: (subgroups are NWP, Climate, Research to Operations/Mission Consolidation, Payload Technology, Innovative RO Techniques (research), Space Weather)

Subgroup side sessions, subgroup reporting to overall group, consolidate recommendations for CGMS (Ends 4:30)

Registration for the 1st IROWG workshop is through the OPAC-4 website:

Note: this will open on March 15, 2010, a 2nd announcement will also be sent then. All participants of the IRWOG 1st workshop are encouraged to register for the OPAC-4, GRAS-SAF Climate workshop.

Conference Committee:

• IROWG: D.R. Ector (NOAA, USA)/IROWG, A. von Engeln (EUMETSAT, DE)
• OPAC-4: A.K. Steiner, U. Foelsche, G. Kirchengast, (WEGC/UniGraz, AT)
• GRAS-SAF: K.B. Lauritsen and H. Gleisner (DMI, Copenhagen, DK)
• General: R. Anthes (UCAR, Boulder, USA), T. Tsuda (RISH/U.Kyoto,JP)