NIOZ
Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI)
Utrecht University, Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research (IMAU)
Description
A major objective is to contribute to the development of an internationally coordinated ocean observing system by obtaining long-term observations of ocean parameters relevant to climate variability.
This project is a Dutch contribution to the ocean component (GOOS) of the International Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). Observations will be made of the North Atlantic component of the thermohaline circulation, which is crucially important for the climate of Western Europe. The data will be used to study the variability of water-mass formation, the associated heat transport in the ocean and atmosphere, and the role of vertical mixing in the ocean. Better understanding of these processes is crucial for improving regional climate models for Western Europe. Knowledge gained from this project will support the tailoring of climate scenarios (Tailoring, CS7) and provide equally important information for the Patterns of Climate Change project (CS5).
TU Delft, International Research Centre for Telecommunications-transmission and Radar (IRCTR)
Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI)
RIVM
Wageningen UR, Alterra
TNO Physics and Electronics Laboratory (TNO-FEL)
Energy Research centre of the Netherlands (ECN)
TU Delft, Aerospace Engineering
The project provides the essential infrastructure for the continuation, extension and maintenance of the Cabauw Experimental Site for Atmospheric Research (CESAR) monitoring programme. Among other topics, it provides information on aerosols and clouds, a subject identified as suffering from one of the most acute shortages of date within the climate sciences. The information obtained from the measurements will be implemented in weather and climate models, leading to several important improvements in the climate scenarios. CS2 is closely linked to CS4.
Wageningen UR, Environmental Sciences Department
Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI)
Wageningen UR
Description
The observations and associated research activities will lead to improved representations of processes concerning aerosols, clouds, radiation, turbulence, land surface fluxes and soil moisture and root water uptake in weather prediction and climate models. This will make an important contribution to reducing uncertainty in climate change scenarios.
Research will be conducted into several important aspects of land-surface hydrological processes. The project will generate important new insights and operational conditions/requirements in the production of regional climate scenarios and for improving the new generation of climate models. The insights gained from this project will also play a role in tailoring climate scenarios.
The Third IPCC report has identified clouds and aerosol to be the main target area of research to improve climate prediction. Not surprisingly, the FP6 EU programme issued several calls in 2003 and 2004 to extend research into clouds and aerosol interactions. The Netherlands seeks to contribute to these calls by participating in Networks of Excellence or Integrated Research Projects. The programme brings the major players in research on aerosol and clouds together within one activity. It includes an assessment of the implications of aerosol–cloud interaction for the regional (distribution of) climate change impacts, and an assessment of the effect of regional spatial planning on the regional distribution of aerosol sources. Monitoring of aerosols, among other particles and gases, is being performed by the Cabauw Experimental Site for Atmospheric Research (CESAR) in the Netherlands.
Within this project improvements will be made to the parameterisation of the indirect aerosol effect in regional climate models, based in part on observations made with innovative new measurement techniques. Besides improvements via parameterisation, improvements are also expected to be made through the delivery of workable specifications of aerosol fields for use in regional climate models. This should make it possible to estimate the regional implications of the aerosol–cloud interactions.
Research in this project will examine the influence of large-scale climate variability and weather patterns on extreme weather events in Western Europe. The natural and anthropogenic causes of climate variability will also be analysed. The project will generate important information for the production of climate scenarios tailored to the needs of specific users (CS6/CS7).
The programme is designed to obtain high quality climate scenarios for the Netherlands suitable for use in various impact assessment applications.
This project will generate basic climate scenarios for use in other projects, Climate changes Spatial Planning themes and BSIK programmes. Output to other projects will be via the Tailoring project, in which information from CS6 will be refined and further adapted for specific uses. In addition, the regional climate model used here mainly provides the environment for testing improvements in paramaterisations, in close collaboration with projects CS3 and CS4.
KNMI
Institute for Inland Water Management and Waste Water Treatment (RIZA)
National Institute for Coastal and Marine Management (RIKZ)
Future Water
Wageningen UR
The scenarios are produced using a combination of Regional Climate Modelling, analysis of Global Climate Model simulations and processing time series of high resolution observations.
In effect, this project forms the interface between the production of climate information and the user of this information. Climate information will be tailored as accurately as possible to the practical needs of the user. For this purpose several pilot studies will be carried out in which climate researchers are seconded to the organisations that make use of climate information. Examples of climate information packaged in usable forms will also be presented to the general public on an educational website.
In this project historical time series of important climate variables will be digitised, analysed and made available to various users. This information can be used for validating climate scenarios, defining a reference climate and for environmental impact studies. Key deliverables from this project are a series of daily precipitation figures for the period 1850–2000, a series of 5–10 minute precipitation data in the 20th century and series of historic weather data from the period 1700–1850.
This project aims to establish and model the impact of past weather regimes and (extreme) precipitation variations on river behaviour, especially floods, under natural and anthropogenic conditions and over annual-to-decadal-to-centennial timescales. It will generate precipitation series and flooding frequencies from a time when human influences on natural processes were still insignificant. These paleoseries will be obtained using highly innovative techniques. They will then be modelled to allow analysis of human influences on river systems in more recent situations and comparison with natural influences. Other applications include estimating potential precipitation variability in future and the probability of flooding associated with this variability plus anthropogenic influences. The study area for this project is the Meuse river basin.
