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Project

Enhancing prediction of tropical Atlantic climate and its impacts (PREFACE)

Description:

Tropical Atlantic climate recently experienced pronounced shifts of great socio-economic importance. The oceanic changes were largest in the eastern boundary upwelling systems. African countries bordering the Atlantic strongly depend upon their ocean resources and were strongly affected by these climatic changes. These countries will face important adaptation challenges associated with global warming. Furthermore, these upwelling regions are also of great climatic importance, playing a key role in regulating global climate. Paradoxically, the Tropical Atlantic is a region of key uncertainty in earth-climate system: state-of-the-art climate models exhibit large systematic error, climate change projections are highly uncertain, and it is largely unknown how climate change will impact marine ecosystems. PREFACE aims to address these interconnected issues, and has the following specific goals:

  • To reduce uncertainties in the knowledge of the functioning of Tropical Atlantic climate, particularly of climate-related ocean processes (including stratification) and dynamics; coupled ocean, atmosphere, and land interactions; and internal and externally forced climate variability.
  • To better understand the impact of model systematic error and its reduction on seasonal-to-decadal climate predictions, and on climate change projections.
  • To improve the simulation and prediction of Tropical Atlantic climate on seasonal, and longer time scales, and contribute to better quantification of climate change impacts in the region.
  • To improve understanding of the cumulative effects of the multiple stressors of climate variability, greenhouse gas induced climate change (including warming and deoxygenation), and fisheries on marine ecosystems, functional diversity, and ecosystem services.
  • To assess the socio-economic vulnerabilities and evaluate the resilience of the welfare of West African fishing communities to climate-driven ecosystem shifts and global markets.

To meet these goals the project brings together European and African expertise to combine regional and global scale modelling capabilities, field experiments and observation systems. The target region includes African countries bordering the Atlantic Ocean and part of Macaronesia included in the European outermost regions.

Project information

Lead

University of Bergen, Geophysical Institute and Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research (NO)

Partners

University of Copenhagen, Niels Bohr Institute (DK), European Centre for Research and Advanced Training in Scientific Computation – CERFACS (FR), Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement – IRD (FR), Meteo-France (FR), Pierre and Marie Curie University – UPMC (FR), GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (DE), The Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research, Warnemünde (DE), Johann Heinrich Von Thuenen Institute (DE), Christian-Albrechts University Kiel – CAU (DE), Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (IT), Wageningen University (NL), Institute of Marine Research (NO), Uni Research AS (NO), Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (ES), Complutense University of Madrid (ES), University of Reading (UK), Instituto Nacional de Investigação Pesqueira – INIP (AO), Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (NA), University of Cape Town (ZA), Instituto Nacional de Desenvolvimento das Pescas INDP (CV), Institut National de Recherche Halieutique – INRH (MA), Institut Sénégalaise de Recherche Agricole-Centre de Recherches Oceanographiques de Dakar-Thiaroye - ISRA-CRODT (SN), Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar (SN), Université d’Abomey-Calavi (BJ), Centre de Recherches Océanologiques (CI), University of Nigeria (NG), Free University of Brussels (BE).

Source of funding

EC Seventh Framework Programme (FP7)

Reference information

Websites:

Published in Climate-ADAPT Jul 22 2016   -   Last Modified in Climate-ADAPT Dec 12 2023

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