Definitions

Advanced, High-Fidelity Models

The concept of model fidelity (in this context fidelity expresses the accuracy with which a numerical simulation captures the behaviour of the real world) is central to PRIMAVERA, and its foundations are in the process of being understood. It is clear that many of the most pressing questions about regional climate change urgently require advances in process simulation. For example, to what extent are recent heat waves, floods and droughts in Europe attributable to natural variability or human influences on the global climate system? How will the risk of such high impact events change over the next few decades and beyond? The extent to which it is possible to provide robust answers to these questions relies fundamentally on the fidelity of the climate models that are used to address them. However, fidelity is insufficient in itself – we must be able to justify why a particular model produces a particular prediction at the process level.

Climate Processes and High-Resolution Global Climate Models

Many years of experience (first in numerical weather prediction and, equally albeit only recently, in climate simulation) have demonstrated that advances in the explicit simulation of key processes are essential to achieving sustained progress and to provide robust answers. High-resolution has been identified as one essential element of the development of Global Climate Models (GCMs) to reproduce key climate processes with higher fidelity than conventional GCMs, thus enabling detailed process understanding.

Our contribution

Predictia participates within the project to achieve the following objective:

To engage with targeted end-user groups in key European economic sectors to strengthen their competitiveness, growth, resilience and ability by exploiting new scientific progress

For this purpose, we were involved in Work Package 11, "User Engagement and Dissemination", to ensure the project outcomes are disseminated and communicated effectively to business sector end-users.