Ziel dieses Projekts ist die Entwicklung einer Modellierungsstrategie für extreme regionale Klimaereignisse und von Konzepten zu deren qualitativer und quantitativer Analyse. Unter einem extremen regionalen Klimaereignis verstehen wir hier einen klimatischen Vorgang, der eine Region von mehreren hundert Kilometern Abmessung beeinflusst, und mit statistisch seltenen Kombinationen von Witterungsparametern wie Temperatur, Niederschlag, etc. einhergeht.

Derzeit im Einsatz befindliche regionale Klimamodelle werden über Simulationszeiträume von einigen Jahren bis Jahrzehnten mit dem Ziel betrieben, die Klimastatistik einer Region abzubilden. Im Zusammenhang mit Extremereignissen ist diese Strategie nicht effizient, da sie (i) zu lange Zeithorizonte erfordert, um eine für die Statistik ausreichende Anzahl von Extremereignissen darzustellen, und (ii) aus eben diesem Grunde keine hinreichenden hohen räumlichen Auflösungen zulässt.

Die Grundidee unseres Ansatzes besteht darin, extreme Witterungsepisoden als Raum-Zeit-Fenster in den Ergebnissen großskaliger Klimamodelle zu identifizieren, aus deren Variablen Anfangs- und Randwerte für ein genestetes Regionalmodell zu gewinnen, hochaufgelöste multiple Simulationen dieser Ereignisse durchzuführen, die Resultate visuell und quantitativ zu analysieren und verbleibende Modellunsicherheiten zu bewerten.

The project will assess the impacts of agricultural, climate, energy, forestry and other associated land-use policies, considering the resulting feed-backs on the climate system. Geographically explicit biophysical models together with an integrated cluster of economic land-use models will be coupled with regional climate models to assess and identify mitigation and adaptation strategies in European agriculture and forestry. The role of distribution and pressures from socio-economic drivers will be assessed in a geographically nested fashion.

Crop/trees growth models operating on the plot level as well as on continental scales will quantify a rich set of mitigation and adaptation strategies focusing on climatic extreme events. The robustness of response strategies to extreme events will further be assessed with risk and uncertainty augmented farm/forest enterprise models. Bioenergy sources and pathways will be assessed with grid level models in combination with economic energy-land-use models. The results from the integrated CC-TAME model cluster will be used to provide: quantitative assessments in terms of cost-efficiency and environmental effectiveness of individual land-use practices; competitive LULUCF mitigation potentials taking into account ancillary benefits, trade-offs and welfare impacts, and policy implications in terms of instrument design and international negotiations.

The proposed structure of the integrated CC-TAME model cluster allows us, to provide an evaluation of policy options at a great level of detail for EU25(27) in a post-Kyoto regime, as well as to offer perspectives on global longer-term policy strategies in accordance with the principles and objectives of the UNFCCCC. Close interactions with policymakers and stakeholders will ensure the policy relevance of CC-TAME results.

CIRCE aims at developing for the first time an assessment of the climate change impacts in the Mediterranean area.
The objectives of the project are:
- To predict and to quantify physical impacts of climate change in the Mediterranean area
- To evaluate the consequences of climate change for the society and the economy of the populations located in the Mediterranean area
- To develop an integrated approach to understand combined effects of climate change
- To identify adaptation and mitigation strategies in collaboration with regional stakeholders CIRCE wants to understand and to explain how climate will change in the Mediterranean area.
The project will investigate how global and Mediterranean climates interact, how the radiative properties of the atmosphere and the radiative fluxes vary, the interaction between cloudiness and aerosol, the modifications in the water cycle. Recent observed modifications in the climate variables and detected trends will be compared. The economic and social consequences of climate change shall be evaluated by analyzing direct impacts on migration, tourism and energy markets together with indirect impacts on the economic system. CIRCE will moreover investigate the consequences on agriculture, forests and ecosystems. human health and air quality.
The variability of extreme events in the future scenario and their impacts will be assessed. A rigorous common framework, including a set of quantitative indicators developed specifically for the Mediterranean environment will be developed and used in collaboration with regional stakeholders.
The results will be incorporated in a decision support system tool and disseminated to the relevant users. Possible adaptation and mitigation strategies will be identified. The integrated results discussed by the project CIRCE will be presented in the first Regional Assessment of Climate Change in the Mediterranean area.

Climate Change is one of the most important issues facing the world in the 21st century and challenges all four (ecological, economical, social and cultural) dimensions of sustainable development. Europe takes a leading role in the necessary response to these challenges. Severe impacts are unavoidable and European adaptation strategies must be supported by a coherent base of knowledge on its key vulnerabilities and response options. Such a base can only be generated by European, national and regional policy-relevant research. It is CIRCLE-2 ERA-Net prime objective to contribute to those efforts by aligning and networking national and regional research funding and managing organisations as well as their respective programmes. CIRCLE-2 will support a common research agenda and share good practices on adaptation with national and European decision makers, thus contributing to the envisaged EU Clearing House on Climate Change Impacts Vulnerability and Adaptation (CCIVA). CIRCLE-2 (CSA-CA) builds on the experience of previous coordinating and support actions (i.e. CIRCLE CA and SSA) and will develop its activities through a now enlarged network of 23 countries and 3 regions. A flexible work plan will LEAD the consortium to identify common policy-relevant CCIVA research needs. Those needs will serve to DESIGN a joint research agenda and deepen the networking and cooperation activities of the consortium. CIRCLE-2 will FUND transnational joint research initiatives including joint calls for projects on CCIVA. The outcomes of these initiatives and projects will provide the consortium with an updated knowledge base on European, National and Regional CCIVA research and CIRCLE-2 will SHARE this knowledge base with decision-makers at all relevant scales. CIRCLE-2 will thus contribute to the development of both European and national Climate Change response frameworks (e.g. Adaptation Strategies) by facilitating research outputs tailor-made to common needs. International cooperation with non-European countries (e.g. developing countries) as well as the involvement of new EU Member States and candidate countries will be particularly encouraged throughout CIRCLE-2 lifetime.

We will determine the air pollution distribution and change in and around hotspots over the last decade from extensive satellite and in-situ observations and we will employ a series of different scale models in order to analyze the impacts of air pollution hot spots on regional and global air quality including potential future changes for various climate scenarios. Focus is on ozone and particulate matter with chemical and physical characterization, and their precursors. The Eastern Mediterranean (Istanbul, Athens, Cairo), the Po Valley, the BeNeLux region, the Pearl River Delta in China (with megacities Guangzhou and Hong Kong) and the hot and polluted European summer 2003 are chosen for intensive case studies.

The consortium includes groups from China, Turkey, Greece and Italy, in addition to France, Germany, UK and Norway, with experts on the observations, emission data and models. A set of chemical transport models which connect all the most important spatial and temporal scales will be developed and used to quantify how the observed air pollution arises. The models and emission inventories will be evaluated, errors identified and improved on the urban, regional and global spatial scales. Climate change may cause changes in air pollution in and around hotspots, and hotspot pollution can change precipitation and temperature/albedo. These feedbacks will be studied in scale-bridging model systems based on global climate model scenarios, and in a coupled high resolution chemistry-climate model.

The model systems evaluated in the project will be applied to analyse mitigation options in and around hotpots, also taking into account climate change. Best available technologies and sectoral changes will be studied. Several partners have key roles in the technical underpinning of policy. They will ensure that the improved emission inventories, scale-bridging model systems and the systematic observational evidence will have a significant, broad and lasting impact.

The CLARIS project aims at strengthening collaborations between Europe and  South America to develop common research strategies on climate change and impact issues in the subtropical region of South America through a multi-scale integrated approach (continental-regional-local).

First, CLARIS will favour the transfer of knowledge and expertise on Earth System Models, their different components and coupling procedures. Moreover, it will offer an easy access to large scale climate data sets and climate simulations mainly obtained in the context of past, present or future European projects.

Second, CLARIS will provide to European and South American scientists involved in regional climate modelling in South America the framework to compare and exchange their methodologies (dynamical and statistical). Complementary to that modelling aspect, it is a major goal for CLARIS to initiate the setting-up of a  high-quality daily climate database for temperature and precipitation. The European expertise acquired through the European Climate Assessment Project will be essential to meet this objective. The resulting database will be of great value to validate and evaluate the model skills in simulating climate trends and extreme event frequency changes.

Finally, at a local scale, CLARIS aims at promoting three pilot actions designed to integrate multi-disciplinary components and to demonstrate the potential and feasibility of using climate information in the decision-making process in three major areas: agriculture, health and pollution.

The CLARIS framework will facilitate the participation of European researchers to IAI (Inter American Institute) projects and the submission of new common research proposals. Moreover, its opening towards stakeholders (e.g. agriculture, reinsurance, hydroelectricity), associated to the project through an expert group, will promote future initiatives on climate impact analysis, thus, contributing to related sustainable development strategies.

The CLARIS LPB Project aims at predicting the regional climate change impacts on La Plata Basin (LPB) in South America, and at designing adaptation strategies for land-use, agriculture, rural development, hydropower production, river transportation, water resources and ecological systems in wetlands. In order to reach such a goal, the project has been built on the following four major thrusts.

First, improving the description and understanding of decadal climate variability is of prime importance for short-term regional climate change projections (2010-2040).

Second, a sound approach requires an ensemble of coordinated regional climate scenarios in order to quantify the amplitude and sources of uncertainties in LPB future climate at two time horizons: 2010-2040 for adaptation strategies and 2070-2100 for assessment of long-range impacts. Such coordination will allow to critically improve the prediction capacity of climate change and its impacts in the region.

Third, adaptation strategies to regional scenarios of climate change impacts require a multi-disciplinary approach where all the regional components (climate, hydrology, land use, land cover, agriculture and deforestation) are addressed in a collaborative way. Feedbacks between the regional climate groups and the land use and hydrology groups will ensure to draw a first-order feedback of future land use and hydrology scenarios onto the future regional climate change.

Fourth, stakeholders must be integrated in the design of adaptation strategies, ensuring their dissemination to public, private and governmental policy-makers.

Finally, in continuity with the FP6 CLARIS Project, our project will put a special emphasis in forming young scientists in European institutes and in strengthening the collaborations between European and South American partners. The project is coordinated with the objectives of LPB, an international project on La Plata Basin that has been endorsed by the CLIVAR and GEWEX Panels.

Observational records show that the global climate is changing and ongoing changes are also visible in Central Eastern Europe. About 64% of all catastrophic events in Europe since 1980 can directly be attributed to weather and climate extremes. Climate change projections show even an increasing likelihood of extremes. Certainly negative impacts of climate change will involve significant economic looses in several regions of Europe, while others may bring health or welfare problems somewhere else. Within CLAVIER three representative Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) will be studied in detail: Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Researches from 6 countries and different disciplines will identify linkages between climate change and its impact on weather patterns with consequences on air pollution, extremes events, and on water resources. Furthermore, an evaluation of the economic impact on agriculture, tourism, energy supply and the public sector will be conducted.

This is of increasing importance for CEEC, which are currently facing a rapid economic development, but also for the European Union as e.g. Romania's and Bulgaria's high vulnerability from extreme events such as floods will impact not only the respective economic goals for joining the EU but also the EU solidarity fund. CLAVIER will focus on ongoing and future climate changes in Central and Eastern European Countries using measurements and existing regional scenarios to determine possible developments of the climate and to address related uncertainty.

In addition, climate projections with very high detail will be carried out for CEEC to fulfil the need for a large amount of detail in time and space, which is inherent in local and regional impact assessment.

Die Aufgabe des Projekts ist, sowohl mit physiologischen als auch ökologischen Methoden den Einfluss der Temperatur als Klimaindikator auf Fischpopulationen in verschiedenen nordeuropäischen Ökosystemen zu untersuchen.

Africa is probably the most vulnerable continent to climate change and climate variability and shows diverse range of agro-ecological and geographical features. Thus the impacts of climate change can be very high and will greatly differ across the continent, and even within countries. There is a urgent need for the most appropriate and up-to-date tools to better understand and predict climate change, assess its impact on African ecosystems and population, and develop the correct adaptation strategies.

In particular the current proposal will focus on the following specific objectives:
1- Develop improved climate predictions on seasonal to decadal climatic scales, especially relevant to SSA;
2- Assess climate impacts in key sectors of SSA livelihood and economy, especially water resources and agriculture;
3- Evaluate the vulnerability of ecosystems and civil population to inter-annual variations and longer trends (10 years) in climate;
4- Suggest and analyse new suited adaptation strategies, focused on local needs;
5- Develop a new concept of 10 years monitoring and forecasting warning system, useful for food security, risk management and civil protection in SSA;
6- Analyse the economic impacts of climate change on agriculture and water resources in SSA and the cost-effectiveness of potential adaptation measures.

These objectives will be achieved by an integrated working approach that involves 9 European, 8 African and 1 International Organization.