StratoClim is a fairly complex project and a management structure has been set up to allow an efficient and balanced management of the project execution. The primary management structure consists of the coordinator, the executive group, and an external advisory board (see diagram below). The communication within StratoClim is supported by a campaign group, led by the mission scientists, and a modelling group.
The project will be coordinated by Markus Rex (AWI) in collaboration with the StratoClim executive group (c.f. below). The coordinator will manage the consortium as a whole and ensure that within StratoClim all mechanisms are in place to guarantee project progress and the achievement of all results envisaged in this proposal (WP 8). He will monitor the communication within the project and organise meetings between groups of project partners as required. He will make all day to day decisions and prompt the executive group for major decisions. He will be the contact point for all disputes within the consortium and will present disputes, which cannot be resolved by mutual agreement, to the executive group for final decision. He will represent the project towards the EC, policy makers, the public media and other organisations, in collaboration with the specific tasks defined in WP 7. The coordinator will initialise and organise the production of all reports requested by the EC.
The coordinator will be supported by the Project Management Team (PMT). The PMT is the central contact point for dealing with administrative, financial and contractual issues of the partners. It provides support to the Executive Group, the WP Leaders, and the partners, in order to ensure an efficient day-to-day management of the project. The PMT is led by Dr. Lars Henning (AWI) who is an EU liaison officer and project manager with proven performance and expertise in the management of FP6 and FP7 collaborative projects. The operational PMT assists the coordinator in the management of administrative, contractual and financial aspects of the project, as well as with the organisation of intra-consortium communication, an internal website, scientific and financial reporting, and consortium management, in order to ensure an efficient project organisation complying with EC requirements. The PMT will ensure that the reports are prepared and submitted on time.
The PMT also coordinates the following activities:
The Executive Group consists of the coordinator; all work package leaders and co-leaders (with the exception of WP9), as well as additional members to ensure balance of competences and representation of all project elements.
Major decisions in StratoClim will be made by the EG and the EG will make the final decision in any disputes or if any of the coordinator’s decisions is appealed by a member of the consortium. Decision making in the EG is by majority vote, the coordinator’s vote decides in case of a tie, according to the following rules:
All the participants are used to collaborate with international groups to reach common ambitious scientific objectives; nonetheless it cannot be excluded that a conflict could occur during the life of the project. Therefore, two main possibilities are anticipated: 1 partner vs. the project and 1 partner vs. 1 or few partners. In the unlikely case of such conflicts, the following steps will be taken:
The EG will further monitor the general progress of the project. The members of the EG will also represent the appropriate work packages and ensure the information flow between individual work packages. Other tasks of the EG are organisation and decisions on publication issues (journal special issues), press releases, and similar issues.
StratoClim will consist of 8 work packages described. Each work package will have a lead scientist (WPL), assisted by one or two co-leaders, whose function will be to ensure the smooth flow of information from the coordinator and core group to the individual research groups, ensure that all necessary facilities are in place for the work package deliverables and milestones to be achieved.
The work package leader will be responsible for the deliverables that are uniquely specific to his or her individual work package while the coordinator and core group will ensure that the ultimate goal of hypothesis testing that will require the combination of results from more than one work package will be completed successfully. Work Package Leaders will have the responsibility to collect suitable input from the partners for the project reports.
As leader of the corresponding work package, WP 1, Fred Stroh (JUELICH), supported by Hans Schlager (DLR) and Francesco Cairo (CNR) will act as mission scientists for the aircraft campaign. They will have responsibility for defining the specific objectives of each sortie and for developing suitable flight patterns to achieve those goals with major support by WP4 and WP5. The Mission Scientists will start with their planning tasks by compiling a campaign white book well in advance of the campaign. They will have the authority to make all campaign related decisions, but will consult the Aircraft campaign group (see below) while drafting this white book and during the campaign,
The Mission Scientists also have to synthesise the status of the instruments and platforms with the wishes of the Core Group and Campaign Group in general. In particular, they will be the point of contact for the Russian partners responsible for aircraft operations, and for the local scientists, airport ground crew and authorities who will naturally be involved in the aircraft operations.
The campaign group will assist the aircraft campaign mission scientist and decide on all kinds of operational issues and make GO/NO-GO decisions on the basis of the information presented in the meeting. The campaign group will consist of the StratoClim coordinator, the aircraft campaign mission scientist, the principal investigators for each instrument, and leaders of the forecasting teams (meteorology, chemical modelling).
Where appropriate these groups may co-opt individuals from any of the projects groups or even outside the project to strengthen any particular scientific, management, or technical requirement that may arise.
This group will coordinate simulations specifically planned for StratoClim, i.e., both sensitivity studies and new scenario simulations with ESMs and CCMs. A further task is to coordinate analyses of data derived from already existing and new ESM and CCM simulations and data from observations (i.e. from tropical field campaign, ground stations, satellite instruments). For that purpose model data will be prepared accordingly. Modelling activities have different scientific tasks and are therefore distributed over WPs. Hence, coordination is required to: define the typology of simulations, share common data, identify key diagnostics, extend climate analysis to new simulations in StratoClim. The group will also help in the interaction with aircraft campaign activities in defining the needed forecasts and optimise the exploitation of observational data within StratoClim. The group will be composed of model PIs and leaders/co-leaders of WPs 4 and 5.
Internationally leading scientists in the field of stratospheric and upper tropospheric research that are not employed by any of the institutions in the StratoClim consortium will
To ensure efficient coordination between these projects in the framework of the cluster, the co-ordinators of the EC projects BACHUS and DACCIWA, which form together with StratoClim the European research cluster “Aerosol and Climate”, are in addition members of the advisory board.
Ideally, the members of the advisory board will be present at the project meetings (see below) to be able to follow project progress most closely and to be directly involved in the discussions leading to strategic decisions. Where this is not possible, telephone conferences with the StratoClim core group (that, depending on the issue, may include the EC scientific officer) and electronic communication will be used.
Modern methods of communication and data dissemination will be used:
Operationally important information will be distributed through email. A database will be set up for acquisition and storage of all experimental and theoretical data sets. Preliminary data from the in-situ instruments have to be delivered 24 hours after each flight, final data as indicated in the deliverables table (Table 1.3 b). The database will be accessible to all StratoClim partners as well as selected external collaborators. To protect the interest and intellectual properties of the investigators, a data protocol defining the rights and duties will have to be signed by each individual accessing the StratoClim database.
In compliance with the EC “Open Data Policy”, all observational data acquired during StratoClim will be made publicly available after a time period (we envisage three years) that will allow the investigators to process and quality check the data and to have the first opportunity for exploitation of their own data. Open availability will be implemented by transferring the database to the StratoClim public website. Further transfer or at least a linkage to EC data servers is intended. Special care will be taken to provide adequate documentation of the individual instrument data and the experiments. An example of the implementation from a previous FP7 project, in which many StratoClim partners were involved is found at https://www.fp7-reconcile.eu/reconciledata
An internal project web page will be established in the form of a restricted access wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki) where all project partners as well as selected persons (e.g. EC scientific officer and others) will have access. The site will be used to communicate all information to and between all project partners. Here the project progress will be permanently monitored through regular brief reports by the active partners (see Gantt chart). The site will have up-to-date links to the project data base and will be instrumental for the online discussion of all sorts of scientific and organisational issues. It will be also used for the preparation of the required progress reports to the Commission.
In addition to intensive electronic communication, project meetings and workshops will be held to organise the work, share, discuss, and analyse data, and prepare project reports. The executive group will hold semi-annual meetings, partly via teleconferences. If necessary, additional meetings for single WPs may be called for.