Research Activity 4 – applications of climate predictions

Demonstrating societal relevance

Although we focus on basic research, our results can be of great benefit to society:

  • Climate Futures, a centre for research-based innovation developing climate prediction for handling climate risk, provide regular monthly forecasts to Norwegian stakeholders from their 4 innovation areas: Smart shipping, sustainable food production, renewable energy and resilient societies. Climate Futures use several world-reknown European models to develop these forecasts and have now included NorCPM in their portofolio. Indeed, a team from BCPU found that after including NorCPM, the predictions got better starting conditions and became more reliable 1 year ahead. Looking further out, including NorCPM also improved the forecasts on a 2-5 year time scale and even 6-9 years ahead for Europe, North America and in the oceans (particularly the North Atlantic and the Nordic Seas). More about this study here. NorCPM is already an important tool for Climate Futures, and our partnership will elaborate on it to further improve the forecast accuracy by assimilating data in the atmosphere and land components of NorESM.
  • In addition we contribute to the WMO Lead Centre for Annual-to-Decadal Climate Prediction.
  • The Institute for Marine Research is exploring the benefits of downscaling on dynamical forecasts for fisheries related application. [upcoming list of relevant publications and blog posts]