Climate Projections and Scenarios

Hotspots and governments focusing on adaptation to climate change need information about the future climate for the area of relevance to them. This calls for climate models and climate effect models that provide useful information at regional and local level, taking into account the uncertainties. Climate and sea level scenarios that show the potential future climate are drawn up on the basis of modelling results. The scale used for the current models is Europe, or part of it, and the resulting climate scenarios provide information on a limited number of climate parameters within a limited spatial and temporal domain. In this theme, the research must focus on regional climate projections, the links from climate to climate effects, and scenario development methods and interpretation.

It is important that a continuing knowledge infrastructure will be developed tot serve users of climate information in the future. It is also important to create knowledge which – in the longer term – will be required to continue generating up-to-date climate information.

A connection must be sought with international developments, for instance climate services institutions in foreign countries. A contribution must also be made to new data and knowledge generated for the IPCC 5th Assessment, and use must be made of this data.

Key questions

How can relevant, consistent, scientifically-founded information on the future climate and climate effects – at the regional and local scale – be furnished effectively, geared towards the user on the basis of the wishes of stakeholders (in hotspots)?
What are the significant links between climate models and the existing national set of effect model tools that can be used for the particular scale and issues that are relevant to the hotspots?
What are the relevant new scenarios for the future climate at the regional and local scale, based on new climate information and models, and how can they be applied meaningfully, taking into account the uncertainties?
Giving particular attention to the natural variability and spatial differentiation, with spatial-specific information on the risks, what are the mechanisms of regional climate change and how can regional climate change models be improved?

A Consortium on High-quality climate projections was formed in 2010. This Consortium research programme aims to provide high quality information on regional climate in The Netherlands, now and in the future, for developing national and regional adaptation strategies. We do so by:

Performing/analyzing regional and global climate model simulations
Providing show cases of high impact future weather situations at very high resolution
Providing coherent time series, and estimates of extremes and uncertainty ranges
Applying climate projections to various sectors, including dealing with uncertainty
Communicating climate change and climate change impact to users

View the list with CcSP and KfC projects with regard to this Research theme.