Regional decadal climate prediction for Europe 2019 - 2028

In February 2019 decadal climate predictions for the period 2019 – 2028 were published by the MiKlip project (https://www.fona-miklip.de/decadal-forecast/decadal-forecast-for-2019-2028/). This is the second time, after 2018, that this includes a higher resolution regional forecast for Europe. Over the last years, the BMBF research program MiKlip (medium-term climate predictions) has developed a forecast system for climate forecasts from one to ten years ahead. These forecasts close a gap between the short-term weather and seasonal predictions and long-term climate projections. The predictability is based on the fact that different components of the climate system (i.e. atmosphere, ocean, land-surface, ice) react with different delays to external forcings. Decadal prediction system use initial conditions of their ensemble forecasts derived from observations to exploit this “memory” of the climate system. The aim of the decadal predictions is not to forecast single days or months, as for the weather or seasonal predictions, but to predict the climatic tendencies over longer periods (e.g. 4-year means).

The MiKlip System (Marotzke et al., 2016) uses the earth system model MPI-ESM for the global forecasts. In addition, as a so far unique feature, the system encompasses a regional component, where a downscaling over Europe with a resolution of 25 km is performed with the regional climate model COSMO-CLM (Mieruch et al., 2014). The increased resolution should enable user-relevant applications of the forecasts. The development of this regional component was led by the IMK-TRO. The current predictions indicate that the 4-year mean temperatures during the next decade will be warmer by more than 1°C compared to the reference period 1980 – 2010 (Fig. 1), which means that this period will be among the hottest since the start of systematic observations. The temperature anomaly increases from West to East over Europe, with the strongest warming over Southeastern Europe.

The current regional and global MiKlip forecasts as well as additional information about the system and the project can be found at: https://www.fona-miklip.de/decadal-forecast/decadal-forecast-for-2019-2028/

References: MiKlip: A National Research Project on Decadal Climate Prediction. Marotzke, J.; Müller, W. A.; Vamborg, F. S. E.; Becker, P.; Cubasch, U.; Feldmann, H.; Kaspar, F.; Kottmeier, C.; Marini, C.; Polkova, I.; Prömmel, K.; Rust, H. W.; Stammer, D.; Ulbrich, U.; Kadow, C.; Köhl, A.; Kröger, J.; Kruschke, T.; Pinto, J. G.; Pohlmann, H.; Reyers, M.; Schröder, M.; Sienz, F.; Timmreck, C.; Ziese, M., 2016. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 97 (12), 2379–2394. doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00184.1 The regional MiKlip decadal forecast ensemble for Europe: The added value of downscaling. Mieruch, S.; Feldmann, H.; Schädler, G.; Lenz, C.-J.; Kothe, S.; Kottmeier, C., 2014. Geoscientific model development, 7 (6), 2983–2999. doi:10.5194/gmd-7-2983-2014.

[Working group: Regional Climate and Water Cycle]