Enabling climate information services for Europe (ECLISE)

Description:

Climate and climate change has high impact on society. Better understanding and improved prediction skills of future weather and climate is vital to protect lives, goods and infrastructures. Different sectors of society and infrastructure are more or less designed to accommodate the current level of climate variability. The prospect of a changing climate necessitates adapting these designs. To prevent high costs, it is of paramount importance that the most reliable and accurate climate information is used to underpin the development of new adaptation strategies.

In response to this need, climate scientists, in close cooperation with climate impact specialists, have started to generate and provide information on future climate projections, aimed at supporting adaptation policies. These efforts are often organized at a national level and, at present, differ considerably in the methods used and the level of user involvement. It has been recognized (WMO-WCC3, EU White paper on Adaptation) that coordination of climate services at an international level would greatly advance the benefits of climate science for adaptation policies. This effort must find a way to deal with the strong local nature of climate impacts and adaptation needs.

The central objective of ECLISE was to take the first step towards the realisation of a European Climate Service. ECLISE was an European effort in which researchers, in close cooperation with users, have developed and demonstrated local climate services to support climate adaption policies. The project did so by providing climate services for several climate-vulnerable regions in Europe, organized at a sectorial level: coastal defence, cities, water resources and energy production. Furthermore, ECLISE has defined, in conceptual terms, how a pan-European Climate Service could be developed in the future, based on experiences from the aforementioned local services and the involvement of a broader set of European decision makers and stakeholders.

Project information

Lead

KNMI

Partners

SMHI

Climate Service Center

Institute for Coastal Research

Wageningen University

CNR-ISAC

UNI Research

Met.no

National Institute of Hydrology and Water

Institute of Geography

Technical University of Crete

Newcastle University

Source of funding

FP7