WP3 - REGIONAL IMPLICATION OF GLOBAL WARMING

Responsable : Cyrille Flamant, LMD

Objectifs et stratégie

The overarching objective of WP3 concerns the characterization of the implications of global warming in terms of regional climate changes as experienced by the human societies is needed to make appropriate adaptation decisions. WP3 will focus on the existing strengths of L-IPSL in terms of expertise (the water cycle, the biogeochemical cycles, and their interactions) and tools (observatories, space-borne observations as well as global and regional modeling – CMIP5 & CORDEX). Enhanced knowledge on how regional climate can also impact global climate will be achieved by assessing the role of mesoscale and regional processes in climate projections.

Disciplinary advances regarding the comprehension of the processes responsible for the changes for key climatic variables currently observed, and their evolution as inferred from climate projections will be developed. The role of regional changes driven by local feedbacks (hydrological coupling, clouds, aerosols, land cover and land use, regional water bodies) must be addressed and weighted against the large scale processes (interactions with the ocean, greenhouse gases, tele-connections, …).

WP3 will benefit from the momentum created at IPSL by the international CORDEX exercise and participate to international intercomparisons, studies using model ensembles, with four regions of focus, where IPSL participates to CORDEX: Europe, the Mediterranean region, Africa and South America. From the corresponding simulations, a synthesis of issues raised within the exercises will be carried out and more general regional modeling bottlenecks will be identified.

WP3 will also provide capacity building for L-IPSL laboratories on climate change implications at the regional scale, as for instance advice on the use of projections on at regional scales and guidance for selecting model simulations and also improving models.