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Local-scale climate scenarios for impact studies and risk assessments: integration of early 21st century ENSEMBLES projections into the ELPIS database

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Abstract

We present the integration of early 21st century climate projections for Europe based on simulations carried out within the EU-FP6 ENSEMBLES project with the LARS-WG stochastic weather generator. The aim was to upgrade ELPIS, a repository of local-scale climate scenarios for use in impact studies and risk assessments that already included global projections from the CMIP3 ensemble and regional scenarios for Japan. To obtain a more reliable simulation of daily rainfall and extremes, changes in wet and dry series derived from daily ENSEMBLES outputs were taken into account. Kernel average smoothers were used to reduce noise arising from sampling artefacts. Examples of risk analyses based on 25-km climate projections from the ENSEMBLES ensemble of regional climate models illustrate the possibilities offered by the updated version of ELPIS. The results stress the importance of tailored information for local-scale impact assessments at the European level.

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Acknowledgements

The ENSEMBLES data used in this work was funded by the EU FP6 Integrated Project ENSEMBLES (contract number 505539) whose support is gratefully acknowledged. Meteorological data for the Swiss sites were kindly provided by the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss). Work by the first author was carried out within the framework of COST Action 734 (Impacts of Climate Change and Variability on European Agriculture—CLIVAGRI), the National Centre of Competence in Research on Climate (NCCR Climate) and National Research Programme ‘Sustainable Water Management’ (NRP 61). The latter are both supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Rothamsted Research receives strategic funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council of the United Kingdom. MAS acknowledges funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7, 2007-2013) under grand agreement no. 282687 - Atopica (www.atopica.eu, accessed 12 November 2012).

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  1. Natural Resources and Agriculture, Agroscope Reckenholz-Tänikon, 8046, Zurich, Switzerland

    Pierluigi Calanca

  2. Computational and Systems Biology Department, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, Hertfordshire, AL5 2JQ, UK

    Mikhail A. Semenov

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  1. Pierluigi Calanca
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  2. Mikhail A. Semenov
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Correspondence to Pierluigi Calanca.

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Calanca, P., Semenov, M.A. Local-scale climate scenarios for impact studies and risk assessments: integration of early 21st century ENSEMBLES projections into the ELPIS database. Theor Appl Climatol 113, 445–455 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-012-0799-3

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