Warning, (in Swedish), level 1, SwedenResearch activities at the Rossby Centre focus on increasing knowledge of the future climate, covering meteorological, oceanographic and hydrological aspects. Work is conducted both on model development and evaluation of data, as well as modelling applications for process studies and climate change research in support of impact and adaptation studies.
About Rossby Centre
May 2013 Newsletter now available
The May 2013 edition of the Rossby Centre newsletter provides information on our latest research news, FP7 project proposals update and news of the recent Rossby Centre Day.
Click here for pdf version of the newsletter
Success for Rossby Centre partnered projects in last FP7 call
We recently received news that three project proposals (CLIPC, HELIX and GLOBAQUA) for the the final FP7 call in which the Rossby Centre are partners have been successful. These projects will now enter final negotiations with the European Commission with likely start dates in Autumn 2013.
Read more on the Rossby Centre's role in these new projects.
Blocking index and Arctic Oscillation in decadal experiments with EC-Earth
Rossby Centre scientists have been analyzing the ability of our modelling system ability to reproduce Arctic Oscillation decadal variability. EC-Earth model version 2.3 (Hazeleger at al, 2013) was used in CMIP5 configuration and forcing setup for an extended decadal hindcast experiment. This consists of an ensemble of 5 members each with 46 decadal simulations, starting yearly on 1st November for the period 1960-2005. The coupled model was initialised using anomaly method for ocean and ice and the 5 members are obtained perturbing both: ocean and ice initial state.
Read more on these decadal experiments using EC-EARTH
Reproducing an extreme precipitation event over Crete using high-resolution climate model simulations
The Rossby Centre is a participant in the EU project ECLISE. The main objective in this project is to take the first step towards the realisation of a European Climate Service. The Rossby Centre is involved mainly in providing regional climate model simulations over Europe to be subsequently used in impact studies. It not only involves pan-European simulations, but also European sub-regions that have been selected for specific case studies, such as Crete. In these latter experiments, the goal is to use very high-resolution climate models. We are currently working towards the development of a new regional climate model (RCM), based on the non-hydrostatic numerical weather prediction model HARMONIE.
Read more on the results of high resolution model simulations over Crete
Evaluation of water vapour in EC-Earth
For model evaluation and improvements long-term homogeneous and consistent observational data sets are needed. The EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring (CM-SAF) datasets have recently been made for available for the climate modelling community, including variables such as cloud and moisture and radiation variables. We have used the water vapour products for evaluation of the Rossby Centre global climate model EC-Earth.
Find out more about the evaluation of water vapour simulated by EC-Earth
Rossby Centre Day 2013: From data to decisions.....
On Monday 6th and Tuesday 7th May 2013 representatives of the Rossby Centre, SMHI, the impacts and risk assessment community and relevant stakeholders came together for the annual Rossby Centre Day at SMHI in Norrköping.
Under the title 'From data to decisions....' the aim of the meeting was to improve the communication between these three communities to allow for more effective collaboration and ultimately more informed decisions on climate change mitigation and adaptation across the Nordic and Baltic regions.
Click here for more information on the meeting
Latest Rossby Centre Newsletter
The February 2013 edition of the Rossby Centre newsletter provides information on our latest research news, the upcoming Rossby Centre Day, an FP7 project update and the CORDEX 2013 conference.
Click here for the pdf version of the newsletter
Rainfall extremes linked to showers - Nature Geosciences article
Rainfall extremes have far reaching consequences for nature and human society and their study therefore constitutes one of the main research focuses for meteorology and climatology. However, the topic of extreme rainfall is further complicated by rainfall properties being strongly dependent on the time scale studied. There are also different types of precipitation, resulting from different processes that produce rain.
Find out more about this recent Nature Geosciences published research
Aerosol-cloud interactions in EC-Earth
Changes in cloud properties resulting from aerosol loading can have potentially significant effects on the radiative forcing and cloud and precipitation patterns and amounts (indirect aerosol effects). The Rossby Centre provides global climate predictions and projections using the EC-Earth model, which features advanced parametrizations of clouds and radiation but has rather crude representation of aerosols. Here we test the benefits of more realistic aerosol distributions and more complete aerosol and cloud representation that accounts for the interactions of aerosols with clouds and radiation.
Find out more about our work on aerosol-cloud interactions in EC Earth
Emerging regional climate change signals under varying large-scale circulation conditions
A large ensemble of regional climate model projections from the ENSEMBLES project has been investigated for if, and when, they show an emergence of significant climate change signals in seasonal mean temperature and precipitation in different areas of Europe. The influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), as simulated in the projections, was also investigated.
Find out more about the results of the ENSEMBLES projections
Rossby Centre Day Update
The next Rossby Centre Day will take place in early May 2013 and will be targeted towards users of Rossby Centre scenario data, both within Sweden and from the wider European scientific community. Further details on the exact date and format will be released early in the New Year.
Latest Rossby Centre newsletter
The October 2012 newsletter provides an overview of the latest activities of the Rossby Centre including updates on new European projects, the release of EC-Earth v3, and the record Arctic sea ice minimum.
October 2012 newsletter pdf version
An ensemble of CORDEX-Africa climate projections simulated by RCA4
Within the CORDEX-Africa initiative a large ensemble of regional climate simulations over Africa has been produced at the Rossby Centre by dynamical downscaling of a subset of GCMs from the CMIP5 project.
More on the CORDEX-Africa simulations at the Rossby Centre
Record sea ice minimum in reality and climate models
A new record minimum of Arctic sea ice cover has been observed in late August 2012. The event is a consequence of a downward trend in sea ice thickness and area. Since the start of the satellite era in 1979, it is likely about two thirds of the Arctic sea ice volume has been lost.
More on the record sea ice minimum
Decadal predictions for the Arctic with EC-EARTH
Decadal predictions are more skillful in some regions and less so elsewhere. SMHI has performed a set of decadal predictions with the EC-EARTH model as part of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project - Phase 5 (CMIP5). The question is how much skill do decadal predictions have in the Arctic?
More on decadal predictions in the Arctic
Upcoming EC-Earth 3 release
A new release of the coupled climate model EC-Earth will become available in October. The model is being developed by a European consortium of climate research units and the Rossby Centre has played a vital role during the engineering of the most recent instance, EC-Earth 3. The upcoming release includes many new aspects, with upgraded component models and a focus on user friendliness.
More on the new version of EC-Earth
New EU Framework Programme 7 projects kick off
In addition to a number of ongoing European Union Framework Programme 7 projects the Rossby Centre also been part of three successful proposals for new FP7 projects.
More on the new FP7 projects
Evaluation of the near-surface wind field in RCA4
Daniel Kunne recently completed a four month internship at the Rossby Centre as part of his MSc studies at Wageningen University. During this time he studied the representation of the offshore wind field at multiple locations across the North Sea, in which three runs of the RCA4 model are compared against station observations. Time series and statistical relations yield promising results, but reveal consistent model biases and differences in the nature of the wind. Classification of the static stability shows signs of the effect of horizontal resolution, wind surface stress, and possibly turbulent kinetic energy on the accuracy of the model.
Click here to read Daniel's report on his work at SMHI
New issue of the Rossby Centre newsletter
The April issue of the Rossby Newsletter contains among other things news on the development of the very high resolution climate model HARMONIE and results from an evaluation of the regional climate model RCA3 regarding the European temperature climate during the last Millennium.
Rossby Centre newsletter, April 2012
NordForsk LANDCLIM workshop on climate modeling, 22-24 February 2011
The research network NordForsk LANDCLIM gathers researchers from Northern Europe dealing with issues related to the link between climate and vegetation on long time scales.
Material from the workshop
Weighting of climate models
Results are now presented of the European Ensembles project, which designed and tested a weighting system for aggregated regional climate models.
Climate Research
Science on climate models
Regional climate models have become important tools in providing detailed scenarios regarding climate change. There is now a comprehensive scientific description of SMHI’s models and how they can be used.
Combined science on climate models
More extreme weather in the future
New climate projections show that extreme weather will be more common in Europe, heavy rain and heat waves will be more frequent and more intense than at present.
More extreme weather in the future
Development of climate models
The Rossby Centre develops three-dimensional climate models that mathematically describe the climate system and interactions between its components. To serve as a national planning instrument with sufficient spatial detail, global climate models must be down-scaled to regional and local level.
Development and evaluation of models
How can climate information be of use?
Methods are developed in order to refine climate scenario information and make the climate data easier to understand and use. Some development areas deal with more detailed future scenarios, climate indices and quantification of uncertainty.
Analysing climate scenario data
