First meeting of new climate modelling and extreme event attribution project, EUCLEIA

Project scientists from climateprediction.net recently attended the launch meeting of EUCLEIA, a new EU-funded project which will study the attribution of weather and climate risks for Europe. The project will develop and improve the methods to help answer the important question: “How has the risk of extreme weather events changed in Europe, due to human-caused climate change?”

EUCLEIA, the “EUropean CLimate and weather Events: Interpretation and Attribution” project, will develop a climate modelling system to investigate heatwaves, cold spells, floods, droughts and storm surges in Europe.

The University of Oxford’s role will be to test different approaches to attribution, using both the Oxford Supercomputer and climateprediction.net’s distributed computing system.

Apart from the scientific development of methods and models, a large emphasis of the project is on engaging with stakeholders in local governments, businesses and media. The project will investigate the questions that people actually need answers for, and to communicate the potential and limitations of attribution science. This dissemination of the main scientific findings of the project is also led by the University of Oxford.

EUCLEIA is mainly about testing methods for attribution, so most European models run through climateprediction.net in the next few years will be related to EUCLEIA. The first one will be the standard physics HadAM3P/HadRM3P simulation for winter 2014, which should be available by the end of the month.

Other academic partners involved in EUCLEIA are:

• The Met Office, UK, which coordinates and manages EUCLEIA
• Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule Zurich (ETH Zurich), Switzerland
• National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France
• University of Edinburgh, UK
• Fundacio Institut Catala De Ciencies Del Clima (IC3), Spain
• Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut (DMI), Denmark
• Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut (KNMI), Netherlands
• University of Reading, UK
• Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht Zentrum Für Material- Und Küstenforschung GmbH (HZG), Germany
• Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ), France

The project has also made links with business collaborators including Munich Re and Zurich Insurance Group.

The project is named after Eucleia, the Greek goddess of good repute and glory.

For further details about the EUCLEIA, visit their website >>