CORA closed at the end of 2021
CORA's mission is to identify opportunities, resources and partners to promote regional climate science and to address key challenges and objectives in the context of the WCRP Strategic Plan 2019-2028. In addition, the office will assist in the integration and synergy of regional activities within WCRP in cooperation with all WCRP bodies, particularly with the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX).
CORA is jointly hosted by the Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS) in Hamburg, Germany, and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research (BCCR) in Bergen, Norway. CORA was officially launched in September 2018 and became fully operational in June 2019.
Background
The establishment of CORA was the result of two years of planning and discussions. An ad-hoc WCRP group met in Hamburg, Germany 10-11 October 2016 supported by the Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the USA. The ad-hoc group discussed the status of and issues regarding WCRP regional activities and designed a concept to explain climate information for regions in the WCRP context. The outcome of this meeting was the report Scoping a framework for WCRP regional activities. One of the recommendations of such report was to launch an international call to establish a coordinator for WCRP regional activities.
The recommendations of the scoping report were endorsed at the 38th Session of the WCRP Joint Scientific Committee and the international call for a coordinator for WCRP regional activities was launched in July 2017. At the end of the selection process, two institutes were invited to jointly host the coordination office for WCRP regional activities: GERICS in Hamburg and BCCR in Bergen.