MEDSCOPE

Projet Européen ERA4CS Joint call for transnational collaborative reesarch projet'Climate Services'

co-financé ERANET ANR  

Développement de méthodes et d'outils pour quantifier l'impact des changements climatiques sur les ressources

Utilisation de prévisions climatiques saisonnières et décennales

Calcul d'indicateurs environnementaux sur le pourtour Méditerranéen

Implication EMMAH dans le WP4 co-coordonné avec P Bertuzzi (Agroclim)

Coordination:Silvio Gualdi Cntre européen CMCC Italie

Partenaires:

BSC Barcelone,CNR (Italie),AENET (ES),CNRM,Agroclim (WP4),Royal Met Belge,INEP/MAP Plan bleu

Abstract

The World Climate Research Programme coordinates international research efforts focused on
climate information products and services - in particular those devoted to improving forecast
capabilities at seasonal to decadal timescales - under the framework of the WMO’s Global
Framework for Climate Services (GFCS). At the same time, within the Mediterranean region,
several initiatives (e.g. CLIMRUN, EUPORIAS) have contributed to developing methods and tools
for creating prototypes of climate services addressing users’ needs in specific sectors, whereas
the purpose of the Mediterranean Climate Outlook Forum is to satisfy the high demand for
user-oriented operational climate information. The MEDSCOPE project aims at advancing such
initiatives by developing climate forecast capabilities and related services on seasonal-to-decadal
timescales. The strategy will be based on exploiting the wide range of existing datasets of climate
observations and forecasts to improve our understanding of sources and mechanisms of
predictability. This will be complemented by targeted sensitivity experiments focusing on key
drivers of Mediterranean climate variability. Improved process understanding will serve as a basis
to develop innovative empirical forecasting systems as well as novel process-based methods for
bias correction, downscaling and optimal combination of sources of information, all of which will be
publicly released via a toolbox. Special efforts will be devoted to sensitivity of climate predictions
to models’ climate drift, to spatial shifts of variability patterns and to the selection of
sub-ensembles representative of the needs of specific applications. The added value provided by
MEDSCOPE to climate services will be assessed for various sectors with high societal impact,
e.g. renewable energy, hydrology and agriculture and forestry. MEDSCOPE will deliver top-quality
climate information, supported by cutting-edge research, tailored for climate services in the
Mediterranean.

key-words:Seasonal to decadal climate predictions, forecast verification, downscaling, sectoral applications