A project aiming at coordinating and supporting Europe’s knowledge base to enable better management of climate-related risks and opportunities, thereby creating greater social and economic value.
five years from 01/12/2015 to 30/11/2020
http://www.climateurope.eu/
General aims
Coordinate and support Europe’s knowledge base to enable better management of climate-related risks and opportunities, thereby creating greater social and economic value.
More in detail, Climateurope project has four primary objectives:
- Develop a Europe-wide framework for Earth-system modelling and climate service activities. This framework will be built around a managed network of European, national and international activities and organisations. The network currently does not exist but is becoming increasingly necessary, and will be cross-disciplinary.
- Coordinate and integrate on-going and future European climate modelling, climate observations and climate service infrastructure initiatives, and facilitate dialogue among the relevant stakeholders, including climate science communities, funding bodies, providers and users. This will improve synergies, reduce fragmentation and promote alignment between national, European and international activities. The user communities will include public sector, businesses, industry and society.
- Establish multi-disciplinary expert groups to assess the state-of-the-art in Earth-system modelling and climate services in Europe, and identify existing gaps, new challenges and emerging needs, including specific recommendations to the European Commission on future research and innovation priorities. Such assessments are desperately needed but currently do not exist.
- Enhance communication and dissemination activities with stakeholders, in particular through a series of events to bring the network together and showcase progress, produce stakeholder-oriented reports on the state-of-the-art in Earth-system modelling and climate services in Europe, operate a website, and undertake additional stakeholder interactions to increase awareness and maximise project impacts.
CMCC Role
Within the project, CMCC is mainly involved in WP6 “Communication and Dissemination”: CMCC is in fact co-leader of WP6, where it will contribute to the development of the dissemination and exploitation plan, to the activity reports and to the editorial for targeted and general audiences. Also, CMCC will lead the design, the development and the management (content and infrastructure) of the Climateurope website and of the Internet Communication Platform; a digital, multimedia environment that will represent the major and official information channel of the project, providing clear information on the project activities and outcomes.
CMCC is also involved in WP2 “Create and Manage the Network”, where it contributes to creating a network which will integrate and coordinate ongoing and future climate change research and innovation initiatives. In WP3 “Mapping and analysis of current Earth system modelling and climate service activities”, CMCC contributes to producing the reports mapping the “State of European climate modelling and climate services”. In WP4 “Forward Looking Recommendations”, it’s involved in the identification and analysis of the emerging needs related to Earth system modelling and climate services development in Europe, and in WP5 “Festivals”, it contributes to the organisation and delivery of the action’s festivals.
Expected results
Two key expected beneficial impacts of the project are:
- enhanced transfer of information between suppliers and users; and
- improved communication of trustworthy and timely science-based information for evidence-based policy, planning and adaptation decisions.
More in the detail, the expected impacts of the project are:
- “Evidence-based policy and appropriate, cost-effective management, planning and adaptation decisions by the public sector, businesses, industry and society through the provision and effective communication of trustworthy and timely science-based information”
- “Enhanced impact of research and innovation activities through better identification of climate change research and innovation priorities”
- “Improved coordination of European, Member States’ research and innovation programmes and funded activities, and synergies with international research and innovation programmes and actions”
- “Better coordination of relevant research and innovation in the EU, including cooperation with the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT)”
- “Enhanced implementation of the EU 2050 Roadmap and relevant initiatives through improved dissemination of key research findings”
- European society’s improved resilience to climate change and mitigation of the risk of dangerous climate change
In addition to the expected impacts in the call, Climateurope also expects to contribute to the implementation of elements of the European Commission’s “Roadmap for Climate Services”, which is providing useful guidelines to European research on engaging in the fast-developing climate services field.
In summary, the aim is to improve the resilience of European society to climate change, and mitigation of the risk of dangerous climate change through improved sharing of best practices, increased efficiency, reduced fragmentation and the creation of synergies with international research and innovation (R&I) programmes.
Activity
The objectives will be met through the outputs of the Work Packages (WPs) including:
- a managed network of users, intermediaries, providers, funders and researchers (WP2);
- syntheses (in the form of periodic open reports) of the state-of-the-art in Earth-system modelling and climate services in Europe (WPs 3, 4, 6);
- syntheses (in the form of recommendations) of challenges and emerging needs for Earth-system modelling and climate services (WPs 3, 4, 6);
- regular events for ensuring the network is active and for dissemination of the syntheses (WP5).
Partners
- BSC - Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputacion
- CMCC - Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici
- CNRS-IPSL - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
- ECMWF - European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
- SMHI - Sveriges Meteorologiska och Hydrologiska Institut
- HZG - Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht - Zentrum für Material und Küstenforschung
- MET OFFICE
- ANR - Agence nationale de la recherche
- KNMI - Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut
- Climate-KIC
- RHMSS - Republicki Hidrometeoroloski Zavod Srbije