Research Units

Climate dynamics and impacts unit

Interaction between external energy and the constraints imposed by the Earth system determine the motion and organization of fluids within the Earth that drive climate, its structure or disorganization and ultimately how climate affects, by organizing or causing disorder, natural systems and societies. The goals of climate dynamics research in this unit are to identify and understand the physical and dynamical mechanisms which maintain climate and/or cause its variations, to discover and understand the predictability of the climate system on seasonal and longer time scales, and to evaluate the impact of human activity on the earth's climate and of climate on societies and ecosystems. Our planet is covered by two thin layers of fluid -the atmosphere and the oceans-, the state and variability of which is of enormous relevance to society. Understanding how our atmosphere and oceans work together to produce the present day climate including its variations and how that climate might change in the future is a major objective of atmosphere-ocean science and it will also be of this research unit. Regarding climate impacts, the work of the unit will be to identify key climatic, and environmental variables in each situation and address and model how the interplay with internal dynamics of the impacted system can be predictable for the benefit of society. General approaches will include advancing in theory, diagnostic analysis of observations and model experiments. To make progress in this field, it is necessary to combine observations of the natural environment with theoretical models based on such observations. The challenge of obtaining observations on the global scale and the complexity of this coupled dynamical fluid system make atmosphere-ocean science an exciting field of study and a strong emphasis of the Institute will be put to this task. This fact substantiates the future implementation of a specific Unit devoted to the study of ocean and atmospheric circulation, which is detailed below, after the six fundamental Units.

Climate Forecasting Unit - CFU

Prediction of both natural climate variability and the human impact on climate is inherently probabilistic, due to uncertainties in forecast initial conditions, representation of key processes within models, and climatic forcing factors. Reliable estimates of climatic risk can be made through ensemble integrations of dynamical climate models or through statistical prediction, in which these uncertainties are explicitly incorporated. The use of the climate risk estimates in socio-economic end-user applications require a seamless set of forecast systems covering a wide range of time scales, and spatial scales covering global, regional and local processes. Such a model system is currently being developed by the international climate community and is the goal of different international research programmes such as THORPEX (a part of the World Weather Research Programme; http://www.wmo.int/thorpex/), as well as long-term projects like the EU-funded ENSEMBLES project (http://www.ensembles-eu.org/). Dynamical models represent the climate system by a set of equations solved by a computer to predict its evolution several months in advance. Thus, fully coupled ocean-land-atmosphere and/or empirical seasonal forecasts models are required in order to predict seasonal climate. Such a model system could provide a basis for quantitative risk assessment of the effects of climate change and climate variability, with emphasis on changes in high-impact events such as extreme, rare or persistent climate situations. This implies the link to a wide range of applications (e.g. water resources, extremes –heatwaves, droughts, floods...-, stat-dyn downscaling of global model forecasts for regional key variables..), bringing together a continuous spectrum of scientific expertise. This instrument should provide policy-relevant information on climate and climate change and its interactions with society. The results of this activity will represent a major step forward in climate science at the state level for its global scope and a valuable contribution to the international programmes mentioned above. The Unit is involved in the QWeCI and CLIM-RUN EU-funded FP7 projects. Long-term goals of this Unit aim at:

• Development of a global climate modelling capacity as part of a larger consortium that develops and maintains a whole suite of Earth System Models (global and regional climate models) useful for climate prediction and for the creation of relevant climate scenarios, including validation and verification.
• Enhancement of a leading scientific role for the understanding of climate variability in regions of the planet of socio-economic interest: Mediterranean basin, South America, SE Asia and tropical and subtropical developing countries.
• Integration of the different sectors of the climate research community (global climate modelling, downscaling, climate diagnostics,...) that are required to satisfy the requirements of a network of users of climate information.
• Creation of a network of end users of climate information to develop specific applications in an end-to- end framework and demonstrate the usefulness of climate predictions for the sake of developing economically/socially efficient climate-based forecast systems.

The CFU Members are:

• Francisco J. Doblas-Reyes, ICREA Research Professor and Unit head
• Yves Soufflet, postdoctoral scientist.
• Hui Du, postdoctoral scientist.
• Muhammad Asif, research engineer.
• Jordi Peralta, research engineer.
• Luis Rodrigues, doctoral student.
• Danila Volpi, doctoral student.
• Aida Pintó, master student.

Climate biogeochemistry unit

Only about half of the carbon dioxide we emit into the atmosphere remains there; the rest is either absorbed by the oceans or by terrestrial ecosystems. Efforts to quantify uptake by each component and in particular their regional variations, have been underway for several years using available atmospheric and oceanic carbon measurements. Changes in terrestrial and ocean biology induced by climate change are being modeled and will need to be incorporated to obtain a more realistic picture of carbon budgets. The long-term fate of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere-ocean system is also an important issue currently investigated at an international scale, that will be an initial focus of the research in this area, to be extended to other greenhouse gases. The strong participation of the Institute in the global design of an international calibrated network for greenhouse gases monitoring and modelling will be a value added feature of this research unit. An additional value within this unit will be the potential for the development, implementation and transfer of cutting-edge technology for high-resolution greenhouse gaess (GG) measurements and monitoring. With an extension to other greenhouse gases, two main questions will be addressed:

1. How can we quantify spatial and temporal variations of GG (CH4, N2O, SF6 and others), their sources and sinks over the continents and the atmospheric water cycle, in order to determine the current fate of fossil fuel CO2, and to improve our knowledge of the global carbon cycle and biogeochemical fluxes in the climate system?
2. How can we determine sources and sinks of atmospheric CO2 and those of other greenhouse gases, over a large scale continental area as a means to corroborate national and EU-wide controls or reductions of carbon emissions?

Dynamics of ecologically ‘active’ systems couples and decouples with climatic processes generating or destroying structures that can be traced and modelled. Biogeochemical cycles afected by climate fluctuations –or by climate change- at a variety of time and space scales are among the main issues of research within this unit. This unit seeks to address and develop ways of understanding and modelling changes taking place in the interactions among cycles in the boundaries of atmospheric-hydrologic- biological interplay and how this knowledge can be used for prediction purposes. The institute will play an important role in providing scientific guidelines for carbon emission trading by identifying sources and sinks of carbon using state-of-the-art coupled climate-carbon cycle models.

Climate change and theoretical climate unit

The mission of the Unit is to bridge the gap between the theoretical advances in those branches of applied mathematics, physics and systems dynamics relevant to the understanding of phenomena observed in the climate system. The research expertise within the Institute that is directly relevant to the kinds of problems addressed within atmospheric and oceanic sciences will include numerical analysis, dynamical systems, stochastic methods, probability models, theory of fluid dynamics, etc.. to name only a few. Scientific disciplines intersecting with the mission of the Unit, include dynamical meteorology, physical oceanography, climate dynamics, nonlinear systems analysis and interactions between climate-biology. The interdisciplinary nature of the research staff of the Unit itself should create the potential for important advances in the climate sciences, now unforeseen. The CCTC unit uses dynamical systems analysis tools such as information theory and linearization to develop a comprehensive theory of predictability. This is then applied to dynamical models of relevance to the atmosphere and ocean and biological systems. This approach can help to address fundamental climate predictability issues, for instance those addressed in other units, such as the nonlinearity in El Nino behavior and its multiscale teleconnections (e.g., using stochastic systems theory). Another example might be expand theoretical contributions to the interpretation of observed magnitude and structure of sea surface variability patterns and persistence, as they constitute one critical structure yielding climatic predictability.

Paleoclimate and modern observations modelling unit

Throughout Earth’s history, external energy variations interacting with internal climate dynamics and the appropriate dose of uncertainty, have determined the fate and organization of energy into the climate system through its variability spectrum, as well as into modulating much of the dynamics of living systems. The most valuable observational constraints that we have to test our understanding of the response of the Earth System to changes in forcing, such as the ones to which we might be faced in the future, come from the geological and ice core record and of the integration of this information into comprehensive climate models. Also, proxies such as for example, tree-rings, varved sediments, coral records, polen,... should also be used to diagnose past variability on interannual-to-decadal timescales over the past millenium (of high interest for the Mediterranean and other relevant regions). The changing response of the climate to insolation forcing, the influence of tropical ocean-atmosphere states on climate, and the influence of freshwater fluxes and temperature changes on ocean circulation will be among the main topics of interest. For the past million years, our planet has experienced dramatic recurrent Ice Ages. Paleo-climatologists in IC³ will work to establish detailed records of these climate fluctuations by analyzing proxies of past climate and simulating them with the aid of modern numerical models of the atmosphere and ocean. The ultimate goal, will be, to find explanations for the different climates of the past to anticipate likely evolution of future climates. Another goal is to develop a comprehensive climate-paleo proxy model, including components for the atmosphere, ocean, vegetation, sea-ice, land-ice, marine carbon cycle, oxygen isotopes and carbon isotopes.

Unit for modelling and computational development

This unit will mainly pursue research on how to improve climate system models of different degrees of complexity and will address basic research on the improvement of dynamical representation of the climate system, with a central focus on numerical methods, their improvement, efficiency, etc.. It will coordinate tasks of the Computing Facilities and Management Lab though it will not have responsibility at the operational level of main IC³ computational resources. It will give ‘research’ support to all other units on the development of new leading simulation activities aimed at addressing fundamental climate issues. Weather and climate modeling involves processes covering an extremely wide range of space and time scales, which makes it a particularly challenging research problem. Recently, a new class of models have been developed that, compared to older models, can cover a smaller area of the earth with a much higher concentration of gridpoints and that attempt to incorporate dynamic vegetation, atmospheric chemistry, carbon cycle components, etc... These models will be useful for examining the impact of smaller-scale features, for instance on climate sensitivity. This unit will also work in conjunction with other units and international initiatives towards the improvement of this new generation of models to understand and reproduce Earth’s climate.