Until now, scientists have not been able to predict warming of the ocean surface in the South Atlantic Ocean. But now, by using artificial intelligence they show that El Niño phenomenon in the region can be predicted up to 3 to 4 months ahead.
Read the article: Breakthrough in forecasting El Niño phenomenon in the Atlantic
Looking back at the achievements of BCPU so far, Professor Noel Keenlyside is very pleased with what he sees. A new result on soil moisture for predicting heat waves adds promise for the future.
Read the article: Soil moisture: A future key to predict heat waves
Climate researchers from Norway, the USA and the Netherlands have been developing a new efficient way to improve weather and climate predictions called supermodelling. Supermodelling is an AI technique incorporating the knowledge in physical models that climate modelers have been developing for decades.
Marianne Williams-Kerslake is a PhD student at the Nansen Center looking at marine heatwaves in the Arctic Ocean. Marine heatwaves are periods of extreme high sea surface temperatures relative to long-term trends. The annual intensity, frequency (number of events per year), and duration of marine heatwaves have increased in the Arctic Ocean in recent decades. In particular, a high frequency of marine heatwaves has been observed around the Svalbard archipelago, leading Marianne to focus on this area. Marianne has been using TOPAZ, a physical reanalysis for the Arctic Ocean, to characterise marine heatwaves around Svalbard. In the autumn of 2024, supported by the Bjerknes Climate Prediction Unit, she travelled to The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) for 2.5 months. She was there to validate and compare marine heatwaves in TOPAZ to observations (measurements) that have been gathered from multiple moorings around Svalbard. This is an exciting opportunity and will enable us to determine how effectively TOPAZ can capture marine heatwave events in this region.
Using observations to assess the effectiveness of the TOPAZ model in portraying marine heatwave events contributes to the research aims of the Bjerknes Climate Prediction Unit, particularly, RA3 – assessing the limits of climate prediction. We will be able to quantify the impact of model errors/limitations on TOPAZ projections of marine heatwaves, increasing our understanding of systems such as TOPAZ.
“Working at UNIS and experiencing life and the nature in Svalbard was an amazing experience. I worked in the Arctic Geophysics group and was supervised by Ragnheid Skogseth and Frank Nilsen. It was fascinating and inspiring to learn about the wide range of research going on at UNIS; in the Arctic Geophysics group alone, there were a variety of projects from Aurora research and polar space missions to essential climate monitoring. During my visit, I obtained encouraging results regarding the accuracy of TOPAZ’s performance in the Svalbard region. I am now in the process of writing up these findings for my first paper. I hope to return to Svalbard for the later studies in my PhD and continue collaboration between the Bjerknes Center and UNIS.” – Marianne Williams-Kerslake
From the 5th to the 8th August 2024, more than a hundred climate researchers meet to discuss research from a Norwegian-Chinese collaboration on climate research.
More than fifty participants come from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, and Fudan University, all Nansen-Zhu partners. Others come from China Ocean University, Sun Yat-Sen University, Danish Meteorological Institute, Norwegian Meteorological Institute and the University of Reading.
Read the article: Cooperation across Eurasia.
Read more about this workshop and the workshop programme: Chinese-Norwegian-climsys-2024workshop.
Lea Svendsen explaining climate prediction on the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research’s Youtube Channel @KlimaForklart.
Helene Langehaug writes about marine heatwaves in the North Sea in Forskning.no, an online newspaper for Norwegian and international research news.
Read the article: Hvorfor er det så mye ekstreme temperaturer i Nordsjøen?
From the 27th to the 30th May 2024, 105 researchers gathered under the rain clouds in Bergen to discuss the science of climate prediction and services. Joined by an additional 60 colleagues online, the community gathered experts from 19 countries across 5 continents. The program included 6 keynote talks, 30 oral presentations, 5 break-out groups, 60 pitch presentations and a 2-hr “society meets science” side-event of 37 participants. Read more about this and consult the workshop programme and more here: https://bcpu.w.uib.no/workshop-may2024/.
The annual WMO Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update by the World Meteorological Organization was released last week. This is a synthesis of the global annual to decadal predictions for the period 2023-2027. The BCPU team contributes to these updates by running climate predictions with the Norwegian Climate Prediction Model. Check out Henrike Wilborn’s nice newspiece about this here !
On Wednesday 14th September, the CLIVAR Climate Dynamics Panel (CDP) will launch the first of an intended series of annual CDP workshops. This year’s workshop will target our understanding of internal and externally forced variability in the climate system, their interaction on decadal timescales and longer, and the effects of variability on extreme events. To foster discussion that will stimulate focused research on this important topic, the workshop aims to tackle the following overarching questions:
The workshop will be online, and consist of six, weekly 2-hour sessions, from September 14th to October 19th, 2022. The sessions will be on Wednesdays with the timings varying to accommodate participation from different time zones.
Workshop program and further event information: https://www.clivar.org/events/clivar-climate-dynamics-panel-cdp-annual-workshop-external-versus-internal-variability
