Klimafolgenforschung: Szenarien für die Klimaanpassung
Climate Impact Research: Scenarios for Climate Change Adaptation

NMWK Project

Prof. Dr. Gerrit Lohmann, Dr. Manfred Mudelsee

Climate varies on a wide array of space and time scales. In recent decades, the role of humans in contributing to climate change has increased. Today considerable uncertainties remain as regards how the future change may look on a fine spatial grid and for climate variables with high spatial variability, in particular precipitation.

The KLIFF project analyses climate change, its impacts and adaptation scenarios in high spatial resolution for the Bundesland Lower Saxony in Germany. The climate science, coordinated by AWI and Büsgen-Institut, takes the standard avenue of using global climate model output (IPCC 4AR) as input for downscaling models (statistical and dynamical) to generate high-resolution projections (21st century) of relevant climate variables: temperature, precipitation, wind speed and so forth.

The new direction is that model validation will be performed on a wide range of variables and indices, notably climate extremes and trends in their occurrence. Examples of climate extremes, which can have costly effects, are floods, hail, heatwaves and storms. The KLIFF project may therefore add to the knowledge of the relation between climate change and risk change at high spatial resolution.

The data products (projections of climate variables and risks) from the climate group (“QT1”) within KLIFF are the input for the impact assessments, which shall be carried out by the majority of project partners. One example is the effect on forest ecosystems and a project goal of KLIFF is to develop and evaluate possible forest management strategies. A second example is coastal protection (North Sea). Finally, the findings of the KLIFF research partners are translated into measures and suggestions for the regional planning authorities, so as to yield a highly efficient communication with stakeholders and policy makers.