Next generation climate monitoring and related capabilities

Expected Outcome

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Climate data are improved both spatially and temporally, physically more consistent and better exploited across a wide range of users, stakeholders and regions;
• The EU climate data sovereignty is strengthened, with enhanced EU contribution to climate monitoring and climate change assessments;
• Climate information distillation is facilitated by innovative methods to provide useful information to policy making in a more efficient way.

Scope

Climate monitoring of Essential Climate Variables[1] at global and regional scales is crucial to assess the state of our climate, its variability and change, and to track progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the corresponding EU climate objectives. Underlying elements, in particular climate data records, reanalyses and forcings, are fundamental to climate science and serve multiple applications across weather, climate, environmental and sectoral domains, generating societal benefits. In turn, methods to distil information from this wealth of data can help extract relevant knowledge and key messages for climate policymaking.

Proposals are expected to address only one of the following priority areas, which should be clearly indicated:

A. Next generation climate data records

Actions should advance innovative methods to enhance, expand and update climate data records; exploit recently rescued and/or new data streams; develop innovative methods to improve the water-energy-carbon cycle physical and bio-geochemical consistency across data records; and improve their applicability for users.

B. Next generation Earth system reanalyses

Actions should undertake research to prepare for the next generation global and European high resolution climate reanalyses. Progress is expected in enhanced data assimilation methods, further coupling the Earth system components, expanding atmospheric composition reanalysis backward in time, piloting carbon-energy-water cycle reanalyses, exploring data-driven methods for reanalyses and applying such improvements in subsequent applications and international initiatives.

C. Next generation climate forcing and emission data sets

Actions are expected to conduct research to ensure more updated and sustained production, and quality assurance procedures of climate forcings and emissions data sets in support of international climate change assessments and climate simulations, including harmonization between forcing and emission data sets (historical and scenarios).

Additionally, all actions should promote the development and use of new, rescued or proxy data streams, and innovative digital tools and methods, including AI-based, to transform climate data into actionable knowledge. These efforts should align with, build upon, and support global intercomparison and coordination frameworks such as CMIP, promoting standardisation, accessibility and utility of climate information across climate science and service user communities, with due consideration of FAIR principles.

Noting the current divestment of the US in climate and environmental related monitoring networks, which may severely impact climate research and services worldwide, proposers are requested to dedicate resources to the assessment and mitigation of such impacts towards increased resilience of climate monitoring at European and global scale.

Research areas of particular interest include new data mining capabilities to facilitate the identification of events and areas of interest, anomalous climate behaviours, unexpected trends, etc. within those data sets. Equally welcome are methods to automate regular and consistent climate reporting along agreed climate indicators, to distil useful climate information (i.e. climate intelligence), and to derive knowledge tailored to relevant users (e.g. for sectoral applications and assessment such as biodiversity monitoring and ecosystem management), from expert users to policy makers and the general public.

International cooperation in the context of IPCC, WCRP[2], GCOS[3], and IAMC[4] is strongly encouraged, as well as close coordination and complementarity with Copernicus, Destination Earth, and other relevant stakeholders.

[1] GCOS Essential Climate Variables

[2] https://www.wcrp-climate.org/

[3] https://gcos.wmo.int/site/global-climate-observing-system-gcos

[4] https://www.iamconsortium.org/