User groups

Several actors and types of users can be identified as representatives of the modeling communities concerned with climate and climate change issues. Potential users that define model requirements originate from groups specialized in different fields of science: e.g., working in weather prediction, Global Circulation Modeling (GCM), Regional Climate Modeling (RCM), Global and Regional Earth System modeling, Carbon Cycle Modeling, Dynamic Vegetation and Hydrology modeling and others.
Potential users of the new land cover products are also model development application groups working in numerical weather prediction (NWP), GCMs and RCMs, global and regional Earth System
models, carbon cycle models and dynamic vegetation and hydrology models.

From this large array of different users, model usage can be conceptualized at a different levels of model engagement into the project:

1. Key user group. They are central to all phases of the user interaction within the project and are integral part as partners in the project. They are the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnment (LSCE) and the Meteorological Office Hadley Center (MOHC). Key users are directly involved in the product specifications, product assessment and the final user assessment of the product.

2. Associated user group. These users may be participating in meetings and in the user survey and their input would feed into the product specifications. These users are not partners in the project directly but could be engaged, in particular if involved in the user assessment of the products.

3. Broad user community. It will be considered through information of the project through the World Wide Web and through reviewing scientific literature, participation in meetings to synthesize requirements for the product specifications and through receiving feedback from general global land cover data users. This group of users would also include known user requirements coming not directly from climate modelers but the “climate concerned” users such as those making use of land cover information for other societal benefits or national reporting and accounting.