This project aims to provide an assessment of the influences of EU forests on weather/climate patterns, in particular atmospheric precipitation across the Europe. To do this, the project will integrate relevant literature, observation records and novel modeling experiments to provide a thorough up-to-date assessment.
Duration
12 months from 01/10/2011 to 01/10/2012
12 months from 01/10/2011 to 01/10/2012
General aims
- Provide a global overview of the impacts of forests on weather/climate patterns. From that backdrop provide an EU wide assessment of forests influences on the local and regional weather and climate, including micro-climate in urban and peri-urban areas, as well as their influence on forest protective functions such as soil conservation and stability and water flow regulation.
- Propose and briefly substantiate the most adequate methodologies to quantify the influences identified above.
- Provide concrete geographical representative examples of EU forest complexes having significant influence on regional or local weather patterns.
CMCC Role
CMCC’s role consisted in integrating weather-related activities performed at
MetOffice with climate-based studies.
Expected results
- Provide a global and EU overview of the impacts of forests on weather/climate patterns.
- Make scientific knowledge limits and gaps to be addressed in forthcoming research projects on this subject.
Activity
- Review the current understanding on relationships between forests and weather/climate worldwide, and highlight how these relate to Europe.
- Synthesize current understanding of the main drivers of forest-weather/climate relationships, the processes through which these interactions occur, and the factors that may threaten them.
- Summarize the current literature and datasets available that provide information on the historical evolution of forest cover and weather/climate across the EU region during the last 150 years.
- Assess the sensitivity of weather patterns to forest areas at a local scale (including urban and peri-urban sites) by running the Met Office and CMCC modeling suite for different locations across the EU.
- Identify key recurrent weather-related phenomena (including floods and droughts) of concern across the EU, and provide specific analyses and assessment of the results with respect to these phenomena.
Partners
- MET OFFICE