EN
X

Projects

Home
/
What we do
/
Research projects

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.

AtlantECO – Atlantic ECOsystems assessment, forecasting & sustainability

The EU-funded AtlantECO project aims to develop and apply a novel, unifying framework that provides knowledge-based resources for a better understanding and management of the Atlantic Ocean and its ecosystem services. AtlantECO will engage with citizens and actors from the industry and policy sectors in order to stimulate responsible behaviour and Blue Growth. The project focuses on three pillars of research: microbiomes, plastic and the plastisphere, and seascape connectivity. In pursuit of this goal, AtlantECO is bringing together experts and pioneers from Europe, South America and South Africa with the relevant resources, knowledge and experience.

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_370: Operational seasonal predictions

The project provides a complete technical solution for the production of monthly seasonal forecasts in real time according to a pre-established operational programme. The project also involves additional development activities to be carried out with the aim of improving the quality and range of the CMCC seasonal forecasting operational system. These complementary activities include : a new ensemble of extended (16 months) hindcasts and real-time forecasts. A portfolio of workflows, structured as Jupyter Notebooks will be produced, aiming at analyzing the capability of dynamical seasonal forecast ensembles to detect and predict Extreme Events, focusing on heatwaves and tropical cyclones. New land initial conditions will be implemented in the operational chain. The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) supports society by providing authoritative information about the past, present and future climate in Europe and the rest of the World.

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).

CE2COAST – Downscaling Climate and Ocean Change to Services: Thresholds and Opportunities

Global change from anthropogenic forcing will have significant impacts at regional and coastal scales on marine systems and dependent socioeconomic systems and ecosystem services and can strongly interact with regional/local drivers such as fishing, pollution, and eutrophication. A capacity to understand and predict these impacts on regional seas and coasts is essential for developing robust strategies for adaptation and mitigation and therefore for the EU’s fulfilment of UN SDGs 13 and 14 but also 2, 6,8, 9, 11, 12, since regional seas and coastal areas support food production, water quality, and industrial/economic activities such as fisheries and aquaculture). Projections of climate and ocean change have been delivered at global or basin scales using Global Climate or Earth System Models (ESMs). However, such models are not able to provide the necessary resolution of physical processes that determine fluxes of carbon, nutrients, heat, and light which in turn control the growth response of the marine food web and thereby ecosystem services such as food supply to fisheries/aquaculture, water quality control, and carbon sequestration. Another limitation of ESMs is that the representation of the marine food web tends to be highly simplified which in turn limits the ability to capture potential shifts in planktonic community structure and elemental stoichiometry and thereby resulting impacts/feedbacks on services. CE2COAST is the coordinated assemblage and analysis of observational and modelling data to deliver state, trends and variability of pressures on ocean services resulting from ocean and coastal climate and biogeochemical change at the European and global scale.

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. 

COMET: Climate Obsertvation and Modelling Expertise Team

The Climate Observation and Modelling Expertise Team (COMET) aims to enhance the use of satellite-derived climate data in ocean and sea ice modelling by integrating high-quality long-term Earth Observation records from ESA’s Climate Change Initiative (CCI) for key Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) such as sea surface temperature and salinity, sea ice, and sea. By applying advanced data assimilation, model calibration, and machine learning techniques, COMET addresses key scientific challenges in climate modelling, particularly in polar regions, and contributes to more accurate and reliable representations of present and future climate conditions. The project strengthens links between the Earth Observation and modelling communities under ESA’s Climate-Space initiative and responds to scientific priorities set by the IPCC, WCRP, and GCOS, focusing on better representation of ocean–ice–atmosphere interactions in climate models. It addresses scientific priorities set by the IPCC, WCRP and GCOS, focusing on better representation of ocean–ice–atmosphere interactions in climate models. By improving the physical consistency, usability, and assimilation of satellite ECVs, COMET helps deliver more reliable climate predictions, particularly for vulnerable regions such as the Arctic.

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.

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

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.

EarthGenerator a foundation model for Earth system modelling

EarthGenerator will deliver a foundation model of the Earth system, extending the WeatherGenerator model by integrating atmosphere, ocean, and land in a single, physically consistent model. By adopting a generative AI approach, EarthGenerator will provide a general-purpose capability adaptable to multiple downstream tasks from seasonal forecasting to multi-annual climate projections with minimal additional training.

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). 

eFlows4HPC – Enabling dynamic and Intelligent workflows in the future EuroHPCecosystem

Nowadays, developers lack tools that enable the development of complex workflows involving HPC simulations and modelling with data analytics and machine learning. eFlows4HPC aims to deliver a workflow software stack and an additional set of services to enable the integration of HPC simulations and modelling with big data analytics and machine learning in scientific and industrial applications. The software stack will allow creating innovative adaptive workflows that efficiently use the computing resources considering novel storage solutions.

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

FERS – Future Earth Research School

The Future Earth Research School aims at providing high-level scientific courses that help researchers understand and anticipate future global environmental challenges in the more general context of sustainability and climate change.

fish RISE – Remote Intelligent Sustainable aquaculturE system for Fish

The sector of aquaculture has been recording constant growth trends at global level triggered by the progressive increase in world population and the resulting growing demand for food. The consumption of fish products has grown by 27% over the last ten years, and FAO estimates that aquaculture will meet 62% of global food demand in 2030. fish RISE project aims to develop innovative systems allowing fish farmers to increase productivity, through the design and implementation of a wide methodology and technology framework for land-based and offshore aquaculture, to be sustainable both economically and, above all, environmentally.

FUTURA: Future of Climate Change Scenarios of the Earth System, Impacts and Socio-Economic Outcomes for Assessment and AND Society

For the first time, all major European modelling and infrastructure efforts are coordinated within a dedicated project to develop and deploy a sustainable and unified system for delivering future emissions and land-use scenarios, and climate and impact projections. This system is referred to hereafter as the’climate pathways system’. It is designed to support climate research, international assessments, and climate policy for the coming decades. FUTURA explores how to design a new cyclical scenario generation protocol built from process-resolving models complemented by emulator and AI approaches. It shifts from causal-chain modelling workflows to a unified system that unifies multi-annual process-driven iterations complemented by the ability to run fast annual iterations. We address how to best align this system with policy timeframes, and how to effectively leverage the model and data multiverse to advance understanding while supporting researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. The FUTURA climate pathways system represents a significant step towards the sustained and responsive delivery of climate projections in support of climate assessment and policy.

FutureMARES – Climate Change and Future Marine Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity

FutureMARES provides socially and economically viable nature-based solutions (NBS) for climate change (CC) adaptation and mitigation to safeguard these ecosystems’ natural capital, biodiversity and services. The program advances understanding of the links between species and community traits, ecological functions and ecosystem services as impacted by CC by analysing the best available data from monitoring programs and conducting targeted experiments and beyond state-of-the-art modelling. Ensemble physical-biogeochemical projections will identify CC hotspots and refugia. Shifts in the distribution and productivity of keystone, structural and endangered species and the consequences for biodiversity will be projected within different CC-NBS scenarios to reveal potential ecological benefits, feedbacks and trade-offs. Novel, social-ecological vulnerability assessments will rank the severity of CC impacts on various ecosystem services and dependent human communities. Complementary analyses at real- world demonstration sites will inform managers and policy-makers on the economic costs and tradeoffs of NBS.

Start typing and press Enter to search

Shopping Cart