Cecilia – EC FP6 Project on the Assessment of Climate Change Impacts in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The presented EC FP6 Project CECILIA is studying climate change impacts in Central and Eastern Europe based on the dynamical downscaling, i.e., nesting of a fine scale limited area model (or Regional Climate Model, RCM) within the Global Climate Models (GCMs). Global Climate Models (GCMs) can reproduce climate features on large scales, but their accuracy decreases when proceeding from continental to regional and local scales because of the lack of resolution. This is especially true for surface fields, such as precipitation, surface air temperature and their extremes, which are critically affected by topography and land use. However, in many applications, particularly related to the assessment of climate change impacts, the information on surface climate change at regional to local scale is fundamental. In the region of Central and Eastern Europe the need for high resolution studies is particularly important. A resolution sufficient to capture the effects of these topographical and associated land-use features is necessary. Therefore, 10 km resolution has been introduced in the presented project CECILIA for regional climate modelling in targeted areas of Central and Eastern Europe to provide satisfactory resolution in local impact studies covering key sectors of the region like hydrology, water quality, and water management, air quality issues, agriculture and forestry.