The Climate Variability and Change (CVC) group undertakes fundamental research to (1) understand climate variability and change, including for climate extremes, (2) investigate global biogeochemical dynamics, effectiveness and impacts of carbon removal technologies to mitigate climate change, (3) developing new Earth System modeling capabilities, and (4) improving our ability to simulate and forecast the climate variations from one month to multiple decades into the future, both at global an regional scales.
These objectives are addressed by expanding our understanding of the climate and biogeochemical processes through a deep analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of state-of-the-art earth system models in comparison with the most up-to-date observational datasets, and on exploiting these detailed analyses to refine the representation of fundamental processes in the models.
Although our primary tool is the EC-Earth European climate model, we also make frequent use of large multi-model databases made available in the context of cooperative international projects (CMIP, SPECS, NMME…) for process analysis. To achieve our objectives, we rely on a wide variety of expertise, both in terms of on climate processes and regions within our group: from the stratosphere down to the deep ocean and from tropical to polar latitudes, as well as on expertise on climate modelling and data assimilation. We have contributed in the past and plan to continue contributing to near-operational climate prediction exercises: on decadal and on seasonal time scales.
Climate Change The FAQs
Objectives
- To develop regional and global climate prediction capability for time scales ranging from a few weeks to a few decades into the future (sub-seasonal to decadal climate prediction).
- To improve the fidelity of Earth System Models and build trust in future projections, to thus develop better mitigation and adaptation methods.