Climate Change and Impacts

Directorate-General For Research And Innovation

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• Publié par: DIRECTORATE-GENERAL-FOR-RESEARCH-AND-INNOVATION
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• Langue: English
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Climate Change
and
Impacts
POUR ARTOP
EUR 15921 EN procédure spéciale
s'adresser: DG XII
Mr. Ib TROEN
SDME 3/71
CCE Bruxelles
gratuit
EUR 15921 EN Global Change:
Climate Change
and
Climate Change Impacts
Focusing of European Research
Proceedings of the symposium held in Copenhagen, Denmark
6-10 September 1993
edited by
I. Troen
European Commission, Brussels, Belgium
EUR 15921 EN LEGAL NOTICE
Neither the Commission of the European Communities nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission
is responsible for the use which might be made of the following information
Printed by" Sinjéclolr_ Foreword
Research on climate change, climate change impacts, and related issues has been sup­
ported in EC programmes since 1979, and have benefited from a steady increase in the
funding volume and in an increasing level of trans European cooperation. Under the
second and third framework programmes the specific climate programmes EPOCH and
(part of) the Environment-programme several truly European wide projects have been
established (e.g. in the fields of past climates, land-surface processes, cloud physics,
climate modelling, and climatic impacts), projects which also have such a size and
focus as to represent substantial contributions to current international global change
programmes, notably WCRP and IGBP.
In the discussions prior to the adoption of the fourth framework programme new sugges­
tions on the future structure of European global change research, its coordination with
national efforts, and its relation to international programmes, were brought forward. As
one part of this discussion the Copenhagen symposium was arranged to help give an
overview of what has been accomplished within EC research in these areas, and also to
have a discussion on future needs.
As the head of the unit responsible for these research areas, I have been happy to see
over the years the steady increase in awareness of the climate issue, and the related
increase in funds made available to help strengthening of European climate research.
The Copenhagen symposium is a good illustration of the strenght and width of the EC
climate research, and of the success of the EC programmes.
I trust that these proceedings from the symposium will be of great interest for everyone
interested in climate research.
R. Fantechi
Head of service
Climatology and Natural Hazards Conference statement
The symposium was arranged by the Danish Centre of Atmospheric research on be­
half of the Commission of the European Communities (Directorate-General for Science,
Research and Development, Climatology and Natural Hazards unit).
The aim of the symposium was to discuss the present knowledge of climate variability,
climate change and associated impacts. The symposium was attended by about 125
leading European climate researchers.
The symposium was opened by the danish minister of the environment Sven Auken, and
Director General of the CEC J.P.Contzen,
Mr. Auken stressed the importance of the climate issue, and pledged for clear research
statements from the scientists to underpin the political decisions.
Mr. Contzen underlined the importance of the new European Network on Research In
global CHange (ENRICH) which will ensure coordination on the European scale as well
as in relation to other international programmes
Professor B. Bolin, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
noted in his introductory lecture the deficiencies of the current IPCC assessment of
climate change, in particular in relation to climate change impacts. He explained the
preparations for a new assessment, which will provide a consolidated review of our
current scientific knowledge. Prof. Bolin stressed the importance of this review process:
"The opinion of the single scientist is completely irrelevant".
44 scientific papers vere presented, each representing research projects involving several
European research groups and supported by the EC climate research programmes, and
covering topics in climate modelling, climate change impacts, past climates and physical
processes in thee system.
The main conclusions were:
Major advances have been made in many areas, extending from high resolution recon­
structions of past climates, which continue to raise new questions on the functioning
of the climate system, to detailed studies of the processes in the atmosphere, oceans,
cryosphere and the biosphere. These advances have helped in the formulation of better
and more complete models for the prediction of climatic change, and its impacts on
agriculture, forests and other sectors of socio-economic importance, in the perspective
of natural variability and human induced perturbations, in particular the burning of
fossils fuels and its consequences in terms of increased CO2 levels and the associated
augmentation of the greenhouse effect. European scientists have contributed significantly to international programmes, such as
the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), and the International Geosphere-
Biosphere Programme (IGBP), providing for example two of the four global warming
computations with coupled ocean-atmosphere models, which form the basis of the latest
IPCC assessment of climatic change.
In spite of these advances there still remain uncomfortably large uncertainty as to the
confidence we can have on our present ability to predict future climatic conditions. This
was underlined by the results of the analyses of the GReenland Icecoring Project (GRIP)
icecore, and other reconstructions of past climate, showing large and rapid climatic fluc­
tuations, which suggest unexplained climate feedback mechanisms, or even fundamental
limitations to predictions of the behaviour of the climate system on timescales compa­
rable to the time span of a human life. Climate models still lack adequate descriptions
of many important physical processes, particularily with respect to the biosphere.
Nonetheless, the global models are the only proper tool for predictions of future cli­
mates, and therefore strong efforts must be sustained in the development of better and
more complete models. At the same time the efforts aiming at improving our under­
standing of the basic processes in our environment must be strengthened, and a better
linking of process oriented studies, impacts studies, and modelling must be ensured. A
major issue in this context is the scale problem: the coarseness of present climate model
resolution (at best hundreds of kilometres) versus the much smaller scale of many pro­
cesses (e.g. patches of vegetation or individual plants). While important progress have
been made in addressing this fundamental problem, both in terms of "downscaling" of
model predictions (using imbedded higher resolution models or statistical methods), and
of "upscaling" of the detailed process studies to the scales of the global models, these
efforts need to be strengthened and better coordinated.
In this context well targeted and structured regional scale process oriented studies are
very important. It was stressed, however, that such studies tend to become very complex
(and expensive), and therefore it must be ensured that they are well managed, that there
is close collaboration with the climate modellers, that maximum use is made of modelling
tools (in particular high resolution "mesoscale" models) for upscaling and for the control
of internal consistency of the measured data, and that the data are calibrated, quality
controlled, documented, and made available to all interested research groups.
Presently, most studies of climate change impacts rely on climate scenarios from global
climate models, from which the changes in physical or biological systems are estimated
(sea-levels, plants, ecosystems, ... ). It was noted, that more effort must be devoted to
the inclusion directly in this model framework the further socio-economic consequences
of such environmental changes. It was suggested, that impacts studies, in parallel with
such scenario driven methods, should identify and document sensitivities and thresholds,
in particular of particularly vulnerable systems, in order that decision makers can decide
on meaningful actions as a matter of precaution. In this context the large uncertainties
in the model predictions must constantly be kept in mind in the policy making process.
It was further noted, that present climate predictions have too much concentrated on
possible changes of mean quantities (for example changes in mean global temperature),
whereas changes in weather patterns and extremes (e.g. droughts and storms) may
dictate the magnitude of the impacts. Similarly, impacts due to sea-level changes, have tended to concentrate on changes in the global average sea level, but the variability and
the extremes of local relative sea-level fluctuations are the key to impacts on coasts and
coastal areas.
The current European effort within the EC programmes must be strengthened and
remain well coordinated with the national activities and the international programmes.
In the perspective of the next EC framework programme the following new specific