EUCLEIA: EUropean CLimate and weather Events: Interpretation and Attribution

EUCLEIA , the “EUropean CLimate and weather Events: Interpretation and Attribution” project, is an EU-funded project studying the attribution of weather and climate risks for Europe.

The project will develop and improve the methods to help answer the question: “How has the risk of extreme weather events changed in Europe, due to human-caused climate change?”

EUCLEIA will develop a climate modelling system to investigate heatwaves, cold spells, floods, droughts and storm surges in Europe. The project aims to provide well-verified assessments of the extent to which such weather-related risks have changed due to human influences on climate and to identify those types of weather events where our scientific understanding is not advanced enough to make a robust assessment of attributable risk.

The attribution system developed by EUCLEIA will deliver reliable and user-relevant attribution assessments on a fast-track basis in the immediate aftermath of extreme events, on a seasonal basis to stakeholder groups and annually to the scientifically prestigious attribution supplement of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Weather@home’s Contribution

The University of Oxford’s role will be to test different approaches to attribution, in particular to define extreme weather events and evaluate our models, using climateprediction.net’s distributed computing system.

Apart from the scientific development of methods and models, a large emphasis of the project is on engaging with stakeholders in local governments, businesses and media. The project will investigate the questions that people actually need answers for, and to communicate the potential and limitations of attribution science. This dissemination of the main scientific findings of the project is also led by the University of Oxford.

EUCLEIA is mainly about testing methods for attribution, so most European models run through climateprediction.net in the next few years will be related to EUCLEIA.

Other academic partners involved in EUCLEIA are:

• The Met Office, UK, which coordinates and manages EUCLEIA
• Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule Zurich (ETH Zurich), Switzerland
• National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France
• University of Edinburgh, UK
• Fundacio Institut Catala De Ciencies Del Clima (IC3), Spain
• Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut (DMI), Denmark
• Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut (KNMI), Netherlands
• University of Reading, UK
• Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht Zentrum Für Material– Und Küstenforschung GmbH (HZG), Germany
• Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ), France

The project has also made links with business collaborators including Munich Re and Zurich Insurance Group.

The project is named after Eucleia, the Greek goddess of good repute and glory.

For further details about EUCLEIA, visit the project website.