The 6th Workshop of Asian Monsoon Years (AMY 2007-2012) was held on 30 Nov. -1 Dec. 2009 in Kunming, China. More than 30 scientists from China, USA, Japan, India, Australia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Thailand and Vietnam attended the workshop, reviewed the progress and planned the future activities.

     The Asian Monsoon Years (AMY 2007-2012) is a cross-cutting initiative as part of the International Monsoon Study (IMS), a coordinated observation and modeling effort under the leadership of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). The AMY stems from grass-root scientific and societal imperatives and includes about two dozen national and multi-national research projects in the Asian monsoon regions. It has been endorsed by the Joint Scientific Committee (JSC) of the WCRP as well as the WCRP Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) Project and the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX). It has also been identified as a cross-cutting weather and climate activity by WMO World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) Monsoon Panel in the draft of WWRP Strategic Plan. The long-term goal of AMY is to improve Asian monsoon prediction for societal benefits through coordinated efforts to improve our understanding of Asian monsoon variability and predictability. It is believed that coordination and cooperation of individual participating and partner projects will greatly facilitate the efforts to reach this goal.

     The initiative was proposed by Dr. Guoxiong Wu and other Chinese scientists, and participated and coordinated by scientists from Asia, USA, and Australia etc. It was endorsed by WCRP in March, 2007. The co-chairs of AMY are Prof. Bin Wang (USA) and Prof. Jun Matsumoto (Japan). The IPO is with the IAP and Dr. Jianping Li is the head of the IPO. A Science Steering Committee, International Program Office, and four Working Groups have been set up. More information can be found at http://www.wcrp-amy.org/ .

     The 6th AMY workshop is an important milestone, since it reaches the half way for this 6-year project, and since the field observation campaigns have already finished their primary observation. The workshop reviewed 2008-2009 AMY field experiments, examined policy and mechanism for data collection and dissemination, discussed AMY Re-analysis implementation plan, coordinated numerical model experiments, discussed collaboration with CLIVAR, GEWEX subprograms and coordination with CEOP Monsoon, WCRP Pan-Monsoon activity, WWRP Monsoon Panel, and THORPEX/YOTC.

     The AMY SSC suggested all the working groups having working meeting in 2010 to identify the specific guidelines in the next phase.

     The 7th AMY workshop will be held during AOGS in July 2010 in India.