1st ClimXtreme – Module A meeting takes place in Karlsruhe
On the 9th and 10th of January 2020, the IMK held the first Climate change and eXtreme Events (ClimXtreme) project meeting, devoted to Module A, Physics and Processes. Over thirty international colleagues of ten leading German research institutions gathered at the IMK-TRO building at Campus North to discuss and share ideas on the recently started project ClimXtreme. The whole steering group (A. Hense - Uni Bonn, C. Kottmeier - IMK-TRO, F. Kaspar -DWD and U. Ulbrich – FU Berlin) also attended this special meeting.
This German-based initiative, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), aims at answering two of the, probably, most frequently asked questions to climate change scientists. To which extent, has past climate change lead to more weather extremes? And will the expected future climate change modify the occurrence of such weather types? The impact of climate change on the earth system needs further understanding and statistical quantification for weather extremes to assess, for instance, to which extent can be the observed changes in weather extremes attributed to human influences.
To this end, ClimXtreme will analyse the large existing ensembles of climate and weather simulations from German and international research programs such as MiKlip, HD(CP)2, REKLIM, CMIP or CORDEX, which cover many thousand simulation years, comparing them with state-of-the-art observations and reanalysis data to ensure the validation of the obtained results. A highlight of the project is the employment of a joint computing evaluation system, fostered by the Free University of Berlin (FREVA) that works as a collaborative hub for data storage and software development. FREVA will allow a faster data and code exchange between the different groups in an easy to use low-end web application. Precisely, is the collaboration between interdisciplinary working groups one of the best assets of ClimXtreme, since not only atmospheric physics and processes will be studied (Module A), but also the Statistics and Attribution (Module B) and the Impact View (Module C).
IMK-TRO is the largest participant of the Module A (Physics and Processes) with four subprojects aiming at an improved process understanding of different extreme weather types in Central Europe. In particular, extreme precipitation will be studied within the subproject A1 “Scale Dependent Processes Representation and Sensitivity Analysis for Most Extreme Events (SEVERE). The focus of A5 “The role of multi-scale Dynamical Processes in shaping recent and future extreme Heat waves over Germany (DynProHeat)” is on heat waves. The dynamics and statistics of cyclones and large-scale circulations will be analysed in A6 “Intensity and structural changes of extreme mid-latitude cyclones change in a warming climate” (CyclEx). Finally, the influence of large-scale processes and mechanisms on severe convective storms variability and characteristics will be assessed in A7 “Long-term Variability and serial Clustering of Severe Thunderstorms in a changing climate” (VarCluST).
We wish a successful start to ClimXtreme and many fruitful and interesting results in anticipation of the Kick-off meeting to take place in April in Berlin!
Figure 1. Group picture of the 1st ClimXtreme - Module A meeting at IMK on 9th-10th January, 2020
Webpages:
Project page: www.climxtreme.de
Funding announcement: https://www.bmbf.de/foerderungen/bekanntmachung-1477.html
Contact:
Christoph Kottmeier (christoph.kottmeier∂kit.edu)
Joaquim G. Pinto (joaquim.pinto∂kit.edu)
Hendrik Feldmann (hendrik.feldmann∂kit.edu)