ENSEMBLES DoW Vn5.1, Contract no. 505539, 21-Nov-08

SIXTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME

PRIORITY 1.1.6.3

Global Change and Ecosystems

Contract for:

INTEGRATED PROJECT

Annex I - “Description of Work”

Project acronym: / ENSEMBLES
Project full title: / ENSEMBLE-based Predictions of Climate Changes and their Impacts
Proposal/Contract no.: / 505539
Date of preparation of Annex I: / 21 November 2008
by Paul van der Linden, with input from Research Theme leaders
Start date of contract: / 1 September 2004

Contents

1. / Project Summary / 3
2. / Project Objectives / 4
3. / Participant List / 10
4. / Relevance to the objectives of the Global Change and Ecosystem activity / 13
5. / Potential Impact / 15
5.1 / Contributions to standards / 18
5.2 / Contributions to policy developments / 19
5.3 / Risk assessment and related communication strategy / 19
6. / Outline implementation plan for the full duration of the project / 20
6.A / Activities / 31
6.1 / Research, technological development and innovation activities / 31
6.2 / Demonstration activities / 96
6.3 / Training activities / 96
6.4 / Management of the Consortium activities / 96
6.B / Plans / 97
6.5 / Plan for using and disseminating knowledge / 97
6.6 / Gender Action Plan / 97
6.7 / Raising public participation and awareness / 98
6.C / Milestones / 99
6.8 / Major Milestones over full project duration / 99
7. / Project management / 105
8. / Detailed implementation plan – months37-64 / 109
8.1 / Planning and timetable / 109
8.2 / Graphical presentation of Research Themes showing their interdependencies / 114
8.3 / Research Theme list / 115
8.4 / Deliverables list / 116
8.5 / Milestones list / 122
8.6 / Research Theme descriptions / 125
10. / Ethical issues / 193
Appendix A – Consortium description / 194
A.1 / Participants and Consortium / 194
A.2 / Sub-contracting / 247
A.3 / Third parties / 247
A.4 / Competitive calls / 247
A.5 / Funding of third country participants / 247
Appendix B – Abbreviations / 248
Appendix C – Change History / 249

1. Project Summary

Abstract

Prediction of both natural climate variability and the human impact on climate is inherently probabilistic, due to uncertainties in forecast initial conditions, representation of key processes within models, and climatic forcing factors. Hence, reliable estimates of climatic risk can only be made through ensemble integrations of Earth-System Models in which these uncertainties are explicitly incorporated. For the first time, a common ensemble climate forecast system will be developed for use across a range of timescales (seasonal, decadal and longer) and spatial scales (global, regional and local). This model system will be used to construct integrated scenarios of future climate change, including both non-intervention and stabilisation scenarios. This will provide a basis for quantitative risk assessment of climate change and climate variability, with emphasis on changes in extremes, including changes in storminess and precipitation and the severity and frequency of drought, and the effects of “surprises”, such as the shutdown of the thermohaline circulation. Most importantly, the model system will be extensively validated. Hindcasts made by the model system for the 20th century will be compared against quality controlled, high resolution gridded datasets for Europe. Probability forecasts made with the model system on seasonal and decadal timescales will also be validated against existing data. The exploitation of the results will be maximised by linking the outputs of the ensemble prediction system to a wide range of applications. In turn, feedbacks from these impact areas back to the climate system will also be addressed. Thus ENSEMBLES will have a structuring effect on European research by bringing together an unprecedented spectrum of world leading expertise. This expertise will be mobilised to maintain and extend European pre-eminence in the provision of policy relevant information on climate and climate change and its interactions with society.

2. Project Objectives

Project Goal:

The overall goal of ENSEMBLES is to maintain and extend European pre-eminence in the provision of policy relevant information on climate and climate change and its interactions with society.

ENSEMBLES will achieve this by:

  • Developing an ensemble prediction system based on the principal state-of-the-art, high resolution, global and regional Earth System models developed in Europe, validated against quality controlled, high resolution gridded datasets for Europe, to produce for the first time, an objective probabilistic estimate of uncertainty in future climate at the seasonal to decadal and longer timescales.
  • Quantifying and reducing the uncertainty in the representation of physical, chemical, biological and human-related feedbacks in the Earth System (including water resource, land use, and air quality issues, and carbon cycle feedbacks).
  • Maximising the exploitation of the results by linking the outputs of the ensemble prediction system to a range of applications, including agriculture, health, food security, energy, water resources, insurance and weather risk management.

To meet the Project Goal the project is split into a number of scientific and technological objectives with a number of operational goals. The work in the project is conducted through 10 closely connected Research Themes (RTs), each of which has Major Milestones (MMs) which are the means of assessing progress towards the project objectives and operational goals. The project objectives and their associated operational goals and measures of success are listed below.

Scientific and Technological Objectives

ENSEMBLES will be a major step forward in climate and climate change science. Over the next five years the major progress in climate science is expected mainly to take place in six areas:

  • The production of probabilistic predictions from seasonal to decadal and longer timescales through the use of ensembles
  • The integration of additional processes in climate models to produce true Earth System models
  • Higher resolution climate models to provide more regionally detailed climate predictions and better information on extreme events
  • Reduction of uncertainty in climate predictions through increased understanding of climate processes and feedbacks and through evaluation and validation of models and techniques
  • The increased application of climate predictions by a growing and increasingly diverse user community.
  • The increased availability of scientific knowledge within the scientific community and to stakeholders, policymakers and the public.

ENSEMBLES will make major scientific contributions in all these areas and, most importantly, will ensure that these six strands are all taken forward in an integrated and co-ordinated way. This will be possible because ENSEMBLES encases each of these elements within a planned and actively managed programme. All of the major groups in Europe, who would individually be involved in the six elements, are participants in the project.

Objective 1: Produce probabilistic predictions from seasonal to decadal and longer timescales through the use of ensembles, and use these to explore the related impacts.

Operational goals:

  • Build an integrated European capability to predict climate changes, and consequent socio-economic impacts, on seasonal, decadal and longer timescales, using a probabilistic multi-model ensemble approach to climate scenario construction (RT1)
  • Produce multi-model sets of climate hindcasts and climate change scenarios (RT2A)
  • Modification of the best and most robust present-day state-of-art statistical downscaling methodologies for integration into the ensemble prediction system (RT2B)
  • Provide ensembles of alternative scenarios of global emissions of greenhouse gases, land use change, and adaptive capacity; to provide these scenarios assuming no policy interventions, and assuming policies aimed at stabilising atmospheric concentrations (RT7)

Measures of success:

  • Ensemble of updated IPCC SRES scenarios of emissions and land use change, without climate policy by month 6 (MM7.1)
  • Ensemble of scenarios of emissions and land use change, with climate policy; scenarios of adaptive capacity by month 12 (MM7.2)
  • A tested ensemble prediction system, available for use in generating multi-model ensemble simulations of future climate by month 24 (MM1.2)
  • Provision of a first stream of climate predictions and climate scenarios by month 24 (MM2A.1)
  • Provision of a second stream of updated climate hindcasts for the 20th century by month 36 (MM2A.2)
  • Provision of a second stream of seasonal to decadal forecasts by month 48 (MM2A.3)
  • Provision of a second stream of updated climate scenarios by month 48 (MM2A.4)
  • Provision of probabilistic assessments of climate change impacts by month 48 (MM6.4)
  • Completion of new methods for the construction of probabilistic regional climate scenariosby month 48 (MM2B.4)
  • Provision of non-European regional climate simulations by month 51 (MM3.6).
  • Specification of the design of Version 2 of the ensemble prediction system by month 60 (MM1.3)
  • Internet-based dissemination of model results by month 60 (MM2A.5)

Objective 2: Integrate additional processes in climate models to produce true Earth System models.

Operational goals:

  • Assemble Earth System models including the various components (atmosphere, ocean, land, cryosphere, chemistry, biogeochemistry, population, economy) and the interactions between them (RT1).
  • Provide estimates of the sign and size of the perturbation of climate change scenarios, and provide a set of interfaces that re-interpret the output of climate change impact models as input to demographic and economic models (RT7).

Measures of success:

  • Interfaces for climate change impact models, modelling systems for estimating climate change feedback on scenario by month 18 (MM7.3)
  • Provision of a set of tested Earth System Models by month 24 (MM1.1)
  • Preliminary climate-change-adjusted scenarios of emissions and land-use change by month 24 (MM7.4)
  • Impact and interface models consistent with RT6, climate change scenarios consistent with RT2A by month 36 (MM7.5)
  • Ensemble of climate-change-adjusted scenarios of emissions and land-use change by month 48 (MM7.6)
  • Completion of preliminary biophysical and biogeochemical online modelling by month 60 (MM6.5)

Objective 3: Develop higher resolution climate models to provide more regionally detailed climate predictions and better information on extreme events.

Operational goals:

  • Develop high resolution (i.e., up to 20 km) regional climate models for Europe along with high quality quality-controlled gridded climate datasets for Europe (RT3, RT5).
  • Completion of an extensive multi-model ensemble of transient RCM simulations for Europeon a scale of 20 km resolution for the time period 1950-2050 and, in some cases, 1950-2100 (RT2B).
  • Explore the use of these high resolution climate change scenarios in impact analyses (RT6).

Measures of success:

  • Specification of a multi-model RCM system for hind-cast by month 12 (MM3.1)
  • Central data server ready to host ENSEMBLES RCM output by month 18 (MM2B.2)
  • Provision of an RCM ensemble simulation at ~20 km resolution based on ERA-40 hind-cast by month 24 (MM3.2)
  • An evaluated RCM-system delivered to RT2B for the simulation of the individual members of the regional transient simulation ensemble by month 30 (MM3.3)
  • The final weighting of the members of the RCM-system used by RT2B for the creation of a probabilistic regional scenario, i.e. the regional ensemble by month 36 (MM3.4)
  • Completion of an extensive multi-model ensemble of RCMs, using the system developed in RT3. Output from the ensemble RCM simulations available from a central data server for use by ENSEMBLES partners by month 36 (MM2B.3)
  • Delivery of gridded dataset for surface climate variables covering Europe for the greater part by month 36 (MM5.3)
  • An analysis of the present climate part of the RT2B transient simulations by month 42 (MM3.5)
  • Evaluation of impacts predicted using Regional Climate Model output, and comparison of the results with impact predictions from coarser-resolution climate models (MM6.4)

Objective 4: Reduce uncertainty in climate predictions and impact estimates through increased understanding of climate processes and feedbacks and through evaluation and validation of models and techniques

Operational goals:

  • Advance understanding of the key processes and feedbacks (including, as far as possible, those due to the effects of policy) that govern natural climate variability and anthropogenic climate change, and their related consequences, with particular attention to the incidence of extreme events and the possibility of abrupt climate change (RT4)
  • Develop a comprehensive approach to the evaluation of climate prediction ensembles and related impacts assessments, thereby providing for the first time a sound, quantitative measure of confidence in future climate change scenarios (RT4, RT5)
  • Development of new statistical methods for the quantification and incorporation of uncertainties in probabilistic regional climate scenarios (RT2B)
  • Perform a comprehensive and independent evaluation of the performance of the ENSEMBLES simulation-prediction system against analyses/observations, including the production of a high-resolution observational dataset necessary to perform this task (RT5)
  • Apply impacts models to describe system sensitivities to a plausible range of climate futures in terms of critical thresholds and to improve the understanding of the impacts of extremes (RT6)

Measures of success:

  • Provision of web-based automated system for assessment of the forecast quality of the seasonal-to-decadal hindcasts by Month 18 (MM5.2)
  • Provision of statistical methods for identifying extreme events and the climate regimes with which they are associated by Month 24 (MM4.3)
  • More confident assessments of the climate sensitivity to GHG forcing through improved understanding of the dependence of that sensitivity on critical feedbacks in the climate system related to clouds, water vapour and the carbon cycle by Month 24 (MM4.1)
  • Calibration and evaluation of impacts models with particular emphasis on interannual variability, key thresholds and understanding the impact of extremes by Month 36 (MM6.2)
  • Reduced uncertainty in regional climate change scenarios through improved understanding of the processes involved in natural modes of climate variability (e.g. ENSO, NAO), and assessment of the ability of the ENSEMBLES models to capture these modes by Month 36 (MM4.2 and MM5.4)
  • Completion of new methods for the construction of probabilistic regional climate scenarios. To include journal papers describing these new methods for the quantification and incorporation of uncertainty in probabilistic regional climate change scenarios and how they provide a fuller and more quantitative/rigorous assessment of uncertainties than previous studies by month 48 (MM2B.4)
  • High-resolution regional climate scenarios with quantitative and, where appropriate, qualitative/relative estimates of the uncertainties/confidence limits, expressed in ways which are comprehensible to different end users, i.e., climate scientists, impact scientists, stakeholders, policy and decision makers by month 48 (MM2B.5)
  • Documentation of ocean heat uptake and regional sea level rise in the ENSEMBLES models by Month 48 (MM4.2)
  • Completion of offline biophysical and biochemical modelling by month 48 (MM6.3)
  • An improved documentation and assessment of cloud, water vapour, precipitation and soil moisture modifications resulting from climate change, based on an improved understanding of key feedback mechanisms by month 60 (MM4.1)
  • More robust assessments of the effects of climate change on the probability of extreme events and on the characteristics of natural modes of climate variability by Month 60 (MM4.2, MM4.3, MM5.1)
  • Improved understanding of the response of the THC to anthropogenic forcing by Month 60 (MM4.1)
  • Evaluation of forecast skill of seasonal-to-decadal scale impacts models when driven with ENSEMBLES EPS by Month 60 (MM5.5)

Objective 5: Increased application of climate predictions by a growing and increasingly diverse user community.

Operational goals:

  • Estimate quantitatively the predictability of climate changes and variations, especially those associated with flood and drought, on timescales of seasons, decades and beyond, and to provide better estimates of the likelihood of abrupt, catastrophic climate change in the coming century (RT4)
  • Linkage of regional impact models to ensembles probabilistic climate scenarios in order to make probabilistic predictions on seasonal-to-decadal timescales and to develop risk-based estimates of the likelihood of exceeding critical thresholds of impact during the 21st Century. Where data are available, e.g. Europe, 25km high resolution probabilistic assessments of impacts will be undertaken (RT6)
  • Production and analysis of probabilistic high-resolution regional climate scenarios for Europeand supporting documentation for use in impacts studies (RT2B)
  • Develop an integrated approach to modelling the impacts of climate variability and change, with particular emphasis on key thresholds and the impacts of extremes, and to provide methodologies for exploiting the probabilistic information within the climate prediction ensembles (RT4)

Measures of success:

  • Probabilistic high-resolution regional climate scenarios for seasonal-to-decadal and longer timescales (1950-2050 and 1950-2100) for the whole of Europe at the 20 km resolution, together with single and multi site-specific climate scenarios for case-study regions and Europe as a whole by month 48 (MM2B.5)
  • Probabilistic high-resolution regional climate scenarios which meet the needs of end users (in particular, impacts scientists in ENSMBLES RT6), for example with respect to information about extreme events, as defined in deliverable 2B.2 by month 48 (MM2B.5)
  • Dissemination of these regional climate scenarios in a range of formats (time series, PDFs, maps etc) suitable for a range of end users, i.e., climate scientists, impact scientists, stakeholders, policy and decision makers by month 48 (MM2B.5)
  • Production of practical guidance for end users to ensure that the most appropriate regional climate scenarios for a particular application can be identified and are used most effectively and efficiently by month 48 (MM2B.5)
  • Improved estimates of the predictability of the climate system on seasonal to decadal timescales, including the influence of land surface anomalies by Month 48 (MM4.4)
  • Completion of probabilistic assessments of long-term climate change impacts and impacts at seasonal to decadal timescales for the core activities: crops, water resources, forests, energy, insurance and human health, by month 48 (MM6.4)
  • Quantification of the predictability associated with ocean initial conditions versus anthropogenic forcing on decadal to multidecadal timescales by Month 60 (MM4.4)

Objective 6: Increased availability of scientific knowledge and provision of relevant information related to the impacts of climate change, within the scientific community, and to stakeholders, policymakers and the public.

Operational goals:

  • Decide which areas of ENSEMBLES work are relevant to end-user groups, and prepare this material in an appropriate format (RT8)
  • Disseminate relevant knowledge gained during the project to policy makers, scientists, and citizens of Europe and the world through the internet, publications, data distribution, workshops, education and training (RT0, RT8)

Measures of success:

  • Assessment of progress and quality of Internet-based information; implementation of suggested modifications by month 24, 36, 48 (MM8.1)
  • Assessment of progress and quality of published material from ENSEMBLES; implementation of suggested modifications by month 36 and 48 (MM8.2)
  • Based on one of the workshops on cross-cutting issues within the ENSEMBLES community; assessment of the best manner in which to strengthen links between inter-disciplinary work packages by month 48 (MM8.3)
  • Assessment of additional scientific needs for Eastern Europe and Newly Associated States that the ENSEMBLES consortium could fulfil, based on the Eastern European Workshop by month 48 (MM8.4)
  • Report on PhD training schools and staff exchange programs, modification of concept if required by month 36 and 48 (MM8.5)
  • Produce a report of the results from the project and launch at an ENSEMBLES scientific conference to showcase the project’s outcomes by month 60 (MM0.6)

It should be noted that in order to achieve the objectives above ENSEMBLES will be creating a wide variety of infrastructures, systems, methods and tools, examples of which are listed below: