Focus on changes that will happen in the near future, with the overarching goal of fostering responsible and sustainable development.
A key objective in ARCPATH as a multidisciplinary project is to use downscaled predictions to better understand and assess, and thereby reduce and prepare for, risks with shipping in sea-ice infested and potentially stormier waters, with extreme weather conditions, in a region largely unprepared to cope with major environmental accidents such as oil spills at sea.
InterDec aims at understanding the origin of decadal-scale climate variability in different regions of the world and their linkages, using observational data sets and through coordinated multi-model experiments.
1. We will investigate inter-regional and inter-basin linkages on sub-seasonal to interannual time scales, achieved mainly through atmospheric teleconnections. At present, the role of air-sea interactions among different latitude belts in the Atlantic and Pacific, and of stratosphere -troposphere coupling in these linkages has not been clarified.
The sail-off meeting of Nordic Center of Excellence Arctic Climate Predictions: Pathways to Resilient, Sustainable Societies (ARCPATH)took place at Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (NERSC) during April 11. and 12. 2016. ARCPATH is funded by the Nordic Council and includes nine partners from Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland in addition to Canadian, Chinese, Russian and US partners.
IMOS will support long-term synergistic cooperation between Russian and Norwegian scientists working in Svalbard by establishing a joint marine plankton observatory in Isfjorden.
Isfjorden is the largest fjord system in Svalbard, located in the dynamic transition zone between warm Atlantic and colder Arctic climate regimes. We will expand the existing time series on seasonal hydrography and plankton dynamics in ice-free Adventfjorden (since 2009) and seasonal ice covered Billefjorden (since 2001) with an observatory located in the mouth of Isfjorden close to Barentsburg and an observatory in the deep Karlskronadjupet, close to Longyearbyen.
The overall objective of PRACTICE is to establish a basis for interannual to decadal prediction of Arctic/North Atlantic climate.
The Bergen community has key competence and infrastructure in the observed and modelled circulation and dynamics of the North Atlantic/Nordic Seas/Arctic Ocean climate system, including both an established Earth System Model and an advanced operational ocean-ice forecasting system focused on the high northern latitudes and Arctic sea ice. There have been several recent developments that corroborate the above and further suggest that the Bergen community is well positioned to take on the challenge of climate
The EXPLAIN project created new forcing dataset based on observations with which to drive NorESM and investigate its ability to reproduce the observed warming hiatus.
The recent apparent hiatus in warming of global mean surface temperatures continues to be the subject of much debate. Various explanations have been proposed, with at least one recent study suggesting it is an artefact of the interpolation methods [Cowtan and Way, QJRMS, 2013]. Changes in various natural and anthropogenic forcing factors in a way that differs from CMIP-5 prescribed forcings have been variously posited [Estrada et al, Nature Geo., 2013; Solomon et al, Science, 2011].
Developement of the Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM)
The term Anthropocene denotes the on-going time period since the beginning of the industrialisation. Human actions have changed the Earth’s climate and environment during this period.
How can the changes up to now be quantified and how to prepare for the future?
Earth system models (ESMs) are key tools to answer this question. They are climate models which next to physics also take into account chemical, biological, and ecosystem processes.
InCREASE seeks to improve projections of future sea level in the North Sea and along the Norwegian coast
Making regional sea level projections is a challenge, since in addition to the numerous local forcing elements, there are components forced from the open ocean onto the shelves and coasts that are largely unknown. Also, the two main components of sea level change, thermal expansion and global land-ice melt, have spatially varying imprints.
Establish a framework for generating, evaluating and improving regional predictions of climate on seasonal-to-decadal time scale, by combining regionally focused analyses of predictive potential, and dynamical downscaling of climate predictions
The regional effects of climate change can be heavily modulated by internal variability on time scales of seasons to decades. This climate variability may either mitigate or exacerbate the impacts of global warming and therefore has profound implications for mitigation and adaptation planning. The CMIP experiments provide global climate scenarios in response to external forcing, but they are not initialized in agreement with the observed state of the climate. Over the past decade, initialized climate predictions have been developed and are included in the 5th IPCC assessment report.
