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Filtering by: Institute for Earth System Predictions

ActFast: Actions for Climate Transition by Developing Future Aquaculture Strategies and Technologies

How to promote a sustainable future for fish production in Europe? This is the question at the heart of ActFast (Actions for Climate Transition by Developing Future Aquaculture Strategies and Technologies), a Horizon Europe project coordinated by the Department of Veterinary Medical Sciences at the University of Bologna. The project addresses the challenge by combining sustainable farming practices, environmental monitoring and Artificial Intelligence. A multidisciplinary team of 28 partners from 10 EU countries, plus Norway, Tunisia and Egypt, will collaborate to develop innovative strategies for future aquaculture. In this context, the Regional Ocean Forecasting Systems (ROFS) division will play a key role as work package leader, contributing substantially to the development of high-resolution climate projections and forecasting systems specifically for the aquaculture sector.

ALIENA: ALIgning Efforts to control Non-indigenous species in the Adriatic sea

Non-indigenous species (NIS) pose a significant threat to biodiversity and ecosystems globally, ranking as the second most common cause of species extinctions. Particularly in the Adriatic Sea, a hub for fishing, tourism and maritime traffic, the introduction of NIS has the potential to exacerbate ecological and economic impacts. ALIENA aims at creating a shared knowledge base and collaborative monitoring system to protect biodiversity from NIS in the Adriatic Sea. Through joint monitoring and modeling efforts focused on these species, the project seeks to develop early warning solutions essential for effective marine management, biodiversity conservation, and public health protection. Additionally, it aims to improve shared protocols for NIS detection, monitoring, and management, while also increasing stakeholders’ awareness of NIS issues.

AQUA: Enhancing Water Management for Climate Change Resilience in Adriatic-Ionian area

The AQUA project, aimed at enhancing resilience to climate change in the Adriatic-Ionian region, has the goal of reaching significant strides in addressing the common challenge of water management in the face of a changing climate. Rising temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and extreme weather events have led to significant shifts in water availability, quality, and distribution. These challenges transcend borders and require collaborative efforts to ensure effective solutions. The AQUA project has set its sights on the overall objective of enhancing resilience to climate change of water utility companies in the Adriatic-Ionian area. By developing an joint action plan and strategy and user-tailored tools, the project aims to improve water resource management, increase capacities for climate change adaptation, and mitigate the impact of natural and man-made disasters. By adopting an integrated approach that considers both droughts and floods and the interconnections between water quantity and quality, the project aims to provide holistic solutions. The project also prioritizes data-driven solutions, co-design, and co-development, ensuring that the outputs are tailored to the specific needs of the participating regions.

Blue-Cloud 2026 | A federated European FAIR and Open Research Ecosystem for oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters

The Blue-Cloud 2026 project builds on the existing pilot Blue-Cloud project (Oct 2019 – Sep 2022) and it evolves its pilot Blue-Cloud ecosystem into a federated European Ecosystem to deliver FAIR and Open Data and analytical services instrumental for deepening research of oceans, the EU sea, coastal and inland waters. It develops a thematic marine extension to European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) for accessible web-based science, serving the needs of the EU Blue Economy, Marine Environment and Marine Knowledge agendas. 

Blue4All – Blueprint demonstration for co-created effective, efficient and resilient networks of MPAs

There is an urgent need to strengthen marine conservation and restoration globally. One of the key measures to achieve this is to ensure that enough sea area is protected in effective ways. This requires designation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in different marine habitats. According to the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030, 30% of Europe’s sea and land areas should be under strict protection. 

C-BLUES: Carbon sequestration in BLUe EcoSystems

C-BLUES will significantly advance knowledge and understanding of blue carbon ecosystems (BCEs) seagrasses, tidal marshes, mangroves, macroalgae, and macroalgae mariculture aiming to achieve three overarching objectives: 1) develop new scientific knowledge within BCEs to reduce scientific uncertainty and improve reporting of blue carbon under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 2) provide input to a possible revision of the 2013 IPCC Wetlands Supplement to increase inclusion of coastal wetlands in national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories and reporting, 3) raise awareness and promote the role of blue carbon for delivering global climate policy commitments in collaboration with Chinese and other international partners.

C3S2_413 – Enhanced Operational Windstorm Service

This contract presents a continuation, a temporal extension, and an enhancement of the current C3S Windstorm Service. Leveraging the current Service structure, contractorss will temporally extend the detection and tracking of Pan-European potentially harmful windstorms associated with extratropical cyclones along the whole available period provided by the ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis dataset (1940-present).

C3S2_520: Quality Assurance for Datasets in the Climate Data Store

This contract is the second phase of Quality Assurance for Datasets in the Climate Data Store and cover the last 2 years of the work plan. The activities cover the operational phase of the Evaluation and Quality Control (EQC) framework using the new Content Integration Manager (CIM) as a tool for the creation, management and publication of EQC content.

CERISE: CopERnIcus climate change Service Evolution

The Copernicus Climate Change Service Evolution (CERISE) project aims to enhance the quality of the C3S reanalysis and seasonal forecast portfolio, with a focus on land-atmosphere coupling. It will support the evolution of C3S by improving the C3S climate reanalysis and seasonal prediction systems and products towards enhanced integrity and coherence of the C3S Earth system Essential Climate Variables. 

CONCEPTU MARIS – CONservation of CEtaceans and Pelagic sea TUrtles in Med: Managing Actions for their Recovery In Sustainability

The Mediterranean Sea is undergoing severe changes driven by increasing anthropogenic pressures. CEtaceans and Pelagic sea TUrtles (CEPTU hereafter) are among the most important charismatic species in the Mediterranean Sea, and crucial bioindicators of marine health conditions. However, there is a data deficiency for most taxa, which is mainly due to the fact that CEPTU species spend the majority of their life in remote offshore areas that are the most difficult to monitor because of their extent. With their offshore movements, they are exposed to multiple anthropogenic stressors, such as maritime traffic causing pollution, underwater noise, disturbance and marine litter exposing the species to a higher risk of entanglement, ingestion or toxicological effects. Entanglement in fishing-related gears also contributes to increased risks linked to the pressure of fishing in pelagic areas.

CONCERTO: Improved CarbOn cycle represeNtation through multi-sCale models and Earth obseRvation for Terrestrial ecOsystems

Terrestrial ecosystems are key to the functioning of the global carbon cycle and play a fundamental role in mitigating climate change. According to the Global Carbon Budget, about 30% of all the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emitted in the atmosphere is removed by vegetation uptake through photosynthesis and accumulation of biomass (so called CO2 sinks on land). Land use change, nutrient limitations, and extreme events (e.g. droughts, fires and heat waves) may limit this potential to sequester carbon. Identifying processes that might destabilise net land carbon uptake is of paramount importance for understanding and managing the global carbon cycle. CONCERTO aims to improve: the current understanding of the terrestrial carbon cycle by adding land processes that are not included yet or not fully developed in Land Surface Models (LSMs); the representation of land change, land use and land management maps to improve the accuracy of carbon fluxes and stocks; the description of impacts on the carbon cycle of extreme events such as droughts, heatwaves and fires, using tools such as state-of-the-art land surface models (LSMs) embedded into Earth system models (EMSs); the integration of LSM improvements in offline global simulations (driven by re-analyses) and in coupled ESMs.

Copernicus Marine Service – Black Sea Monitoring and Forecasting Centre (BLK MFC)

Black Sea – Monitoring and Forecasting Centre (BLK MFC) provides regular and systematic information about the physical state of the ocean and marine ecosystems for the Black Sea. The system is based on a numerical ocean model assimilating in-situ and satellite data. BLK MFC gathers expertise in the field of ocean analysis and forecast in the Black Sea, brings together knowledge of the regional Black Sea dynamics, and enhances technical links with other CMEMS components and strong connection with the MED MFC. Moreover, BLK MFC’s objectives include the planning and efficient implementation of system upgrades, product quality, and support to the production of the Ocean State Report (OSR) and Ocean Monitoring Indicators (OMI).

Copernicus Marine Service – Mediterranean Sea Monitoring and Forecasting Centre (MED MFC)

The Mediterranean Monitoring and Forecasting Center (MED MFC) of the Copernicus Marine Service provides regular and systematic reference information on the physical and biogeochemical state for the Mediterranean Sea. MED MFC develops, implements and operationally delivers analysis, forecast as well as reanalysis reconstructions of the essential ocean variables in the Mediterranean Sea. It enables marine policy implementation, supports Blue Growth and scientific innovation. Copernicus Marine Service is an open and free of charge service, compliant with EU regulations such as INSPIRE and the Delegated Regulation on Copernicus data and information policy.

COST Action CA23108: Seasonal-to-decadal climate predictability in the Mediterranean: process understanding and services

Climate forecasting has enormous potential influence in different socio-economic sectors, such as agriculture, health, water management, and energy. Actionable climate information is particularly relevant at seasonal-to-decadal timescales, where predictability is linked to slow fluctuations of the system such as those in the ocean, sea-ice and land-surface, thus bridging weather/sub-seasonal predictions (mainly relying on atmospheric initial condition) with future projections (mainly based on atmospheric radiative forcing). Seasonal-to-decadal climate forecasting has progressed considerably in recent years, but prediction skill over the Mediterranean is still limited. Better understanding the drivers of regional climate anomalies as well as exploring untapped sources of predictability constitute a much-needed and timely effort.

CRIceS – Climate relevant interactions and feedbacks: the key role of sea ice and snow in the polar and global climate system

The Arctic and Antarctic regions are experiencing rapid and unprecedented changes due to polar and global climate change, clearly caused by anthropogenic activities. 21st century projections show substantial decrease of sea ice in both Arctic and Antarctic, which are expected to impact people in the Arctic and also society beyond polar regions. CRiceS aims to investigate how rapid sea ice decline is interlinked with physical and chemical changes in the polar oceans and atmosphere, and to fully understand the causes and consequences of this polar transition. CRiceS will quantify the controlling chemical, biogeochemical, and physical interactions within the coupled ocean-ice/snow-atmosphere system through comprehensive analysis of new and emerging in-situ and satellite observations, and will improve numerical descriptions of sea ice dynamics/energy exchange, aerosols, clouds and radiation, biogeochemical exchanges. This improved understanding allows for improved quantification of feedback mechanisms and teleconnections within the Earth system.

EDITO-Model Lab, Underlying models for the European DIgital Twin Ocean – EDITO-Model Lab

EDITO-Model Lab will prepare the next generation of ocean models, complementary to Copernicus Marine Service to be integrated into the EU public infrastructure of the European Digital Twin Ocean that will ensure access to required input and validation data (from EMODnet, EuroGOOS, ECMWF, Copernicus Services and Sentinels satellite observations) and to high performance and distributed computing facilities (from EuroHPC for High Performance Computing and other cloud computing resources) and that will be consolidated under developments of Destination Earth (DestinE). 

ENMASSE: Enhancing NEMO for Marine Applications and Services

The Enhancing NEMO for Marine Applications and Services (ENMASSE) project represents a pivotal initiative aimed at advancing the capabilities of the NEMO (Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean) modelling platform. This enhancement is designed to address specific scientific and operational requirements set by the Copernicus Marine Service (CMS) program for the development and delivery of more precise and sophisticated ocean modelling products. These products are intended to support a wide range of applications, including marine safety, climate prediction, and ecosystem monitoring, ultimately contributing to informed decision-making and sustainable ocean management.

ESA CMUG: Climate Modelling Users Group

ESA has established the Climate Modelling User Group (CMUG) to place a climate system perspective at the centre of its Climate Change Initiative (CCI) programme, and to provide a dedicated forum through which the Earth observation data community and the climate modelling and reanalysis community can work closely together. CMUG will work with the Essential Climate Variable CCI projects to achieve this goal.

ESA_WATER: Wide-swath AlTimetry for Eddy Reconstruction

Mesoscale eddies are ubiquitous in the ocean, they can originate nearly everywhere, move around the basin and transporting trapped water with anomalous properties with respect to the surroundings. Although only the surface expression of mesoscale eddies is visible in remote sensing measurement of sea level anomaly (SLA), they are three-dimensional (3D) structures that can reach down into the pycnocline. WATER project plans to study the population of “active” eddies that can be extracted from surface altimetry and sea surface temperature maps. “Active” eddies are surface SLA pattern that include a colocalized SST environmental anomaly that is typically the signal of the 3D physical/biological processes concurring in the same place. The project plans to assess the active population both in the SWOT-enhanced altimetry maps and the conventional altimetry data to quantify the impact of the next-generation altimeter.

ESiWACE3 – Center of excellence for weather and climate phase 3

Extreme weather events and climate change are two of the main threats for society of the 21st century. Extreme weather events caused over 500 thousand casualties and over 2 trillion USD economic damages in the past 20 years. A failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation targets is ranked among the leading threats to global society. At the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, leaders from 194 countries of the world unanimously acknowledged the serious threat posed by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Society must now become resilient to changes in climate over coming decades, which requires making quantitative estimates for future changes of weather patterns and climate extremes. This includes exceptional weather events such as violent windstorms and flash floods, but also persistent anomalies in planetary-scale circulation patterns, which lead to pervasive flooding in some regions and seasons, and long-lived drought and extremes of heat in others. Numerical models of the Earth system represent the most important tool to anticipate and assess these kinds of threats. One of the main factors that is limiting the skill of these models is limited resolution, and resolution, in turn, is limited by computational power that can be leveraged by these models. The first two phases of the ESiWACE Centre of Excellence (COE) have pushed the resolution of global Earth system models to unprecedented levels. This includes the first global atmosphere models that were able to run at ~1 km resolution in the first phase of ESiWACE and coupled atmosphere/ocean models that were able to

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