“Cooperation between Earth System Models and Integrated Assessment Models as done in CRESCENDO will help us to implement the Paris climate targets. It will provide insights on the efforts needed to implement these targets as well as the benefits”. This statement from Prof. Colin Jones, CRESCENDO Project Coordinator, was one of the most important take-home messages from CRESCENDO’s policy event held the 28th of February on the European Parliament.
The event was attended by around 40 people, including Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), European Commission officers, international networks, research agencies, business consultancies and a group of European students. The event was chaired by Asher Minns (University of East Anglia), CRESCENDO Science Communication lead, who from the beginning ensured top tips, transparent knowledge and clear messages were delivered to the audience
The event entitled “Realizing the 2015 Paris Agreement - Pathways to and benefits of limiting global warming to 1.5°C”, presented some of the science and policy insights from CRESCENDO’s leading Earth system scientists pertinent to realizing the Paris Agreement. These insights are now published as a policy leaflet launched at the event in seven different languages (English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish).
Together with Colin Jones (University of Leeds), three researchers talked about different aspects of how CRESCENDO will support policy making with respect to realizing the Paris Agreement:
- Chris Jones (Met Office Hadley Centre) described how CRESCENDO scientists are combining improved modeling techniques, new observations and novel analysis methodologies to reduce uncertainty about the carbon budget to meet the Paris targets.
- Detlef van Vuuren (PBL Netherlands) stressed how “The Paris climate targets are still achievable, but will be much more difficult to realize if suitable policies are not implemented very soon”.
- Sonia Seneviratne (ETH Zurich) stressed how limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C offers major potential benefits across a range of regional impacts.
Besides CRESCENDO scientists, the Directorate-General for Research & Innovation (EC DG RTD) and the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) were also represented at the meeting:
- Diogo De Gusmão-Sørensen presented the European policy view on climate science, research and innovation,
- Wilfran Moufouma-Okia presented the plans for IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C to be ready on 2018, and to which CRESCENDO scientists will contribute.
This event is part of the CRESCENDO’s communication strategy designed to ensure knowledge developed in the project is communicated to key stakeholder communities in an engaging and understandable form.
CRESCENDO is a European Union Horizon 2020 project and will improve the representation of key processes in European Earth System Models (ESMs), use the models to generate a new set of Earth system projections for the coming century and coordinate the European contribution to CMIP6.
The at SMHI is coordinating the simulations with the project ESMs for CMIP6 Scenario Model Intercomparison Project and is also coordinating EC-Earth modelling efforts in the project. SMHI is also leading the Knowledge Dissemination task, targeting not only policy and decision makers, but also the international climate research community, climate impacts and regional downscaling communities, adaptation and mitigation researchers, and the general public.