Module C - Regionalized Decadal Prediction

The objective of Module C is to establish a regionalisation component to the MiKlip decadal prediction system. Downscaling ensembles are created and assessed with respect to the predictive skill and added value in specific target regions. During MiKlip the target regions Europe, Africa and Central America/North Atlantic were addressed using up to three regional climate models (COSMO-CLM, REMO and WRF) und several approaches regarding the downscaling techniques, process descriptions and initialization methods. For MiKlip II Module C focusses on the target region Europe and a single RCM, namely COSMO-CLM, for the regional prediction system. The goal is to improve and consolidate this system and provide robust estimates of its predictive skill.
 

To achieve this, the research has been grouped into three major objectives sub-divided into a total of eight work-packages with contributions from five institutions:

Objective C1: Advance the COSMO-CLM towards a regional climate-system model (2 work packages)      

The focus here is on two main components of the regional climate system, which showed promising potential to improve process descriptions and predictability during the first phase of MiKlip:

  • Implementation and testing a coupled regional ocean model (CCLM/NEMO) for the marginal seas around Europe (C1-WP1)
  • Inclusion of more sophisticated soil-vegetation exchange models (SVATs) into the predictions system (C1-WP2)

Objective C2: Examine the application potential of regional decadal predictions and the relevant process behind decadal predictability over Europe (3 work packages)

  • Study the skill and added value of the regionalisation for user relevant climate parameters (C2-WP1)
  • Examine large regional climate anomalies and their impact and predictability over Europe (C2-WP2)
  • Improved attribution of the long-term climate evolution in Europe to climate trends due to green-house gas emissions and longer-term climate variability (caused for instance by variations of the oceanic processes in the North Atlantic). This will be achieved by enlarging the investigation period over the 20th century and thereby increasing the robustness of the skill estimates. (C2-WP3)

Objective C3: Generation and optimising regional decadal prediction ensembles (3 work packages)

  • Post-processing of regional decadal predictions, to improve the results of the raw simulation ensembles towards a reliable forecast (C3-WP1)
  • Improve the composition of the ensembles with respect to a well-balanced ensemble and computational efficiency (C3-WP2)
  • Generation of the regional ensemble predictions and assessment of the optimal configuration (C3-WP3)

See also: http://www.clm-community.eu/index.php?menuid=261

Contact

Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK-TRO), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Prof. Dr. Christoph Kottmeier

Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK-TRO), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Hendrik Feldmann