Objective: AMAZALERT will enable raising the alert about critical feedbacks between climate, society, land-use change, vegetation change, water availability and policies in Amazonia. We will:
1) analyze and improve coupled models of global climate and Amazon, land use, vegetation and socio-economic drivers to quantify anthropogenic and climate induced land-use and land cover change and non-linear, irreversible feedbacks among these components
2) assess the role of regional and global policies and societal responses in the Amazon region for altering the trajectory of land-use change in the face of climate change and other anthropogenic factors and finally
3) propose i) an Early Warning System for detecting any imminent irreversible loss of Amazon ecosystem services, ii) policy response strategies to prevent such loss.

We first prioritise the functions of Amazonia and threats to these. We then will analyse uncertainties in biogeochemistry, land cover (vegetation), land-use change and regional hydrology, as well as nonlinear responses and feedbacks using existing and new simulations from state of the art models in which land surface is coupled to global climate. The way in which policies and possible future response strategies of policy makers, trade and economy will affect land-use change will be modelled. This will lead to (A) understanding the impact on and effectiveness of a range of international and regional policy options, including REDD+; and (B) identification of both biophysical and socio-economic indicators of irreversible change.
AMAZALERT integrates the multidisciplinary knowledge and research of world-renowned, highly influential climate, land cover, land use change scientists and also policy analysts from 14 European and South-American institutions that have been collaborating for 10 to 30 years. Thus, this project can achieve maximum impact on EU (2020 climate goals), international and South-American strategies, including REDD

The dramatic change in the region of the West African monsoon (WAM) from wet conditions in the 50s and 60s to much drier conditions from the 70s to the 90s represents one of the strongest inter-decadal signals on the planet in the 20th century. Marked inter-annual variations in recent decades have resulted in extremely dry years with devastating environmental and socio-economic impacts.

The abrupt decrease of water resources in the Sahel divided by two the cattle population and some exportation cultures disappeared. Vulnerability of West African societies to climate variability is likely to increase in the next decades as demands on resources increase due to the rapidly growing population. The situation may be exacerbated by the effects of climate change, land degradation caused by the growing population and water pollution.

Motivated by the need to develop strategies to reduce the socioeconomic impacts of climate variability and change in WAM we aim:

• - To improve our ability to predict the WAM and its impacts on intra-seasonal to decadal timescales,

• - To improve our ability to predict the consequences of climate change on WAM variability and its impacts.

These objectives will be achieved in the African Monsoon Multidisciplinar/ Analysis (AMMA) project by re-enforcing the regional environmental monitoring systems and conducting intensive field campaigns. This will lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms involved and in-fine improve our models and their predictive skills.
The observational system will cover the regional water cycle, the atmospheric dynamics and chemistry, the land-surface and oceanic conditions. It will cover 3 time scales:

• - a long term monitoring,

• - an enhanced observing period of two years and

• - a special observing periods over one rainy season.

In order to monitor the human dimension of the West African monsoon variability crop yields, water resources and health will be monitored with the same strategy.

The project AMPERE is aiming for a broad exploration of mitigation pathways and associated mitigation costs under various real world limitations, while at the same time generating a better understanding about the differences across models, and the relation to historical trends. Uncertainties about the costs of mitigation originate from the entire causal chain ranging from economic activity, to emissions and related technologies, and the response of the carbon cycle and climate system to greenhouse gas emissions. AMPERE will use a sizable ensemble of state-of-the-art energy-economy and integrated assessment models to analyse mitigation pathways and associated mitigation costs in a series of multi-model intercomparisons. A consortium of 21 international partners will work on AMPERE.

The priority programs of field, experimental and modelling studies to analyse the impacts of the anticipated climate change on aquatic ecosystems. According to most forecasts for our region, emphasis will be given to the effects of seasonal temperature increases with most of the warming occurring in winter. For running waters also increased frequencies of extreme events can be considered. It is anticipated, that climate change will differently affect light dependent processes (e.g. primary production) and temperature dependent processes (e.g. heterotrophic processes). As a consequence, not only changed phenologies and population dynamics of singles species but also shifts in biotic interactions (competition, predation) are expected. It will be the focus of the priority program, to analyse the community and ecosystem level consequences of a temporal de-coupling ("mismatch") of hitherto synchronised processes ("match"; e.g. temporal coincidence of food abundance and prey demand by certain life-cycle stages of consumers).

Impact of climate change becomes more obvious from year to year. Weather changes, such as warmer summer and winter with less snow, play along with resulting consequences, such as storms and floods, a major role for spatial and ecological development of regions. Thus, economical losses steadily increase caused by natural events. Furthermore, the global climate change has potential long-term effects on flora and fauna, sea level rise and coastal protection.

Against this background the project "Developing Policies & Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change in the Baltic Sea Region" (ASTRA) aims to estimate regional consequences of the ongoing global climate change in the Baltic Sea Region and to develop  strategies to deal with climate change. This will be done taking into account medium and long-term strategies depend on support of decision makers and stakeholders - regional and local planners included. The ICZM-Oder project is a significant case study within the ASTRA project.

The broad interdisciplinary consortia assembled in the Arctic Tipping Points (ATP) project will be managed (WP1) to identify the elements of the Arctic marine ecosystem likely to show abrupt changes in response to climate change, and establish the levels of the corresponding climate drivers inducing the regime shift for these tipping elements. ATP will evaluate the consequences of crossing those tipping points, and the associated risks and opportunities for economic activities dependent on the Arctic marine ecosystem.

Historical records of Arctic climate change and projections of future changes in Arctic sea climate and ice systems are compiled (WP2), and time series of Arctic ecosystem components analyzed using novel statistical tools to detect regime shifts and ecological thresholds and tipping points, and evaluate their sensitivity to climatic forcing (WP3). Experimental manipulations and comparative analyses across broad climatic ranges will be used to detect climatic thresholds and tipping points of Arctic organisms and ecosystems, using genome-wide analyses to develop genomic markers of climate-driven stress useful as early-warning indicators of the proximity of tipping points (WP4). A biological-physical coupled 3 D model will be used to generate future trajectories of Arctic ecosystems under projected climate change scenarios and to identify their consequences for the Arctic ecosystem (WP5).

The impacts of abrupt changes in the Arctic ecosystems for activities of strategic importance for the European Arctic and the associated impacts on employment and income will be elucidated, and policies and legislative frameworks to adapt and mitigate these impacts will be analysed (WP 6). The effectiveness of possible alternative, post-Kyoto policies and stabilization targets in avoiding climate-driven thresholds in the Arctic ecosystem will be examined, and the results and projections will be conveyed to policy makers, economic sectors and the public in general (WP7).

Climate change will influence precipitation amounts and patterns, and lead to an increase in terrestrial and ocean temperatures and a rise in sea level. The resulting changes will jeopardize the integrity of the ecosystem and increase risks caused by natural disasters. There are good experiences of adaptation in the Baltic Sea Region but they are somehow fragmented and do not acknowledge the fact that the Baltic Sea is a specific eco-region. The EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region recognizes this problem by calling for a Baltic Sea Region-wide climate change adaptation strategy, which should provide a framework to strengthen cooperation and information sharing within the region and help to create a coherent set of adaptation policies and actions from the transnational to the local level. Such an overarching framework, which is badly missing, would help to tackle what the Operating Programme of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region has identified as a major weakness: the “lack of transnational co-operation and joint planning in usage of Baltic Sea space and in minimalisation of risks caused by natural disasters”.

The BaltCICA Project is designed to focus on the most imminent problems that climate change is likely to cause in the Baltic Sea Region. The concentration of large parts of the population and many larger cities in coastal areas make the region especially sensitive to climate change. Changes in precipitation and flood patterns as well as rising sea level can affect not only the built environment but also water availability and quality.

Adaptation to climate change cannot be solved solely locally and in isolated attempts, but calls for cooperation and integrated approaches in the Baltic Sea Region. The BaltCICA project with local and regional partners prepares regions and municipalities to cope with a changing climate.

The project "Baltic Atlas of Long-Term Inventory and Climatology" (BALTIC) of the Baltic Sea Research Institute Warnemünde (IOW) was first announced on the meeting of the ICES Working Group on Marine Data Management in April 2000 in Hamburg and to the ICES Baltic Committee Meeting in September 2000.

With the aim to support e.g. climate-related investigations, interdisciplinary studies, numerical modelling and regular monitoring, BALTIC is intended to provide the research community with a comprehensive "climate atlas" for the Baltic Sea, inspired by famous paradigms like the COADS (Woodruff et al. 1987) or the Levitus (1982) global oceanographic data sets, going beyond the well-known data collections of Bock (1971), Lenz (1971) or Janssen et al. (1999) in terms of a significantly more extensive observational data basis involved, but remaining pristine and unbiased by refraining from the incorporation of any numerical model data.

In the past years, a lot of historical CTD and bottle data had been reconstructed in the "Historical Data Rescue" (HDR) framework of the marine research institutes around the Baltic Sea. Starting from the data already available in the data banks of IOW, the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH), and the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), the final goal is to build a collection of virtually all accessible oceanographic observation data of the Baltic Sea. In a preceding study, it had been found that indeed much more data than presently stored in the ICES database are available to be included into this project.

In a first stage, the atlas is only based on oceanographic temperature/salinity/pressure and oxygen/hydrogen sulphide/nutrient measurements with highest possible spatial and temporal resolution. In subsequent future steps, the intended additional quantities will be those immediately derived thereof, like e.g. density, sound speed, entropy, enthalpy, pycnocline depth, or halocline depth. In further stages of development, data like density anomaly, alkalinity, biological abundances, or pollution may be added.

Es ist das Ziel dieses Vorhabens, am Ende der dreijährigen Laufzeit einen umfassenden Bericht vorzulegen, welcher die Chancen und Risiken der Bioenergieproduktion auf breiter Grundlage bewertet und auftretende Fragen von der ökonomischen Konkurrenzfähigkeit über möglicherweise entstehende räumliche Nutzungsmuster bis zu den ökologischen und den Boden betreffenden Konsequenzen eines intensiven Anbaus quantitativ beleuchtet. Die Analyse geht von einem globalisierten Energiemarkt aus und ist damit global. Sie fokussiert auf Biomasseenergie der zweiten Generation.