Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

Constraining uncertainty of multi decadal climate projections

Project description

Making multi-decadal climate change predictions

Climate change is all around us – from longer periods of drought to an increase in the number of tropical storms, and from the loss of sea ice to more intense heat waves. Scientists predict global climate is projected to change over this century, but there is a need for improved information about the extent of the change beyond the next few decades. The EU-funded CONSTRAIN project aims to fill climate science and related policy-making knowledge gaps through a better understanding of how natural and human factors affect multi-decadal regional climate change. It will help scientists make climate projections for the next 20-50 years. The project’s findings will benefit the EU’s adaptation and mitigation strategy.

Objective

CONSTRAIN will focus research on three climate science knowledge gaps and a policy-facing knowledge gap that can be resolved over the next 4-5 years to significantly improve our understanding of how natural and human factors affect multi-decadal regional climate change. This will cement EU science as the world-leader in understanding climate sensitivity and climate variability, deliver significantly improved capability to make climate projections for the next 20-50 years, and provide up-to-date scientific evidence for international climate policy in two phases: Phase 1 will deliver a timely characterisation of physical science uncertainty and how it affects projections and committed levels of warming to the 2021 IPCC sixth assessment report; Phase 2 will deliver constrained surface temperature projections for the 2023 UNFCCC Global Stocktake. CONSTRAIN will take full advantage of climate model integrations from the sixth Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) and will leverage existing H2020 and ERC projects. Novel CMIP6 analyses will be combined with dedicated high resolution simulations and new observations to address identified knowledge gaps on radiative forcing, cloud feedbacks and the relationship between ocean variability and atmospheric change. A fourth identified knowledge gap is the effective translation of new physical science understanding into an improved evidence base for policy decisions. CONSTRAIN will address this by developing climate model emulators that integrate and operationalise learning from across the consortium to provide new capability to assess impacts of climate change under a broad range of emission scenarios. We will focus on the expected spatially resolved decadal changes until mid-century providing robust evidence on climate sensitivity, and regional temperature, precipitation and circulation changes, thereby enabling evidence-based policy decisions that will directly benefit the EU's adaptation and mitigation strategy.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

RIA - Research and Innovation action

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-LC-CLA-2018-2019-2020

See all projects funded under this call

Coordinator

UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 893 367,15
Address
WOODHOUSE LANE
LS2 9JT Leeds
United Kingdom

See on map

Region
Yorkshire and the Humber West Yorkshire Leeds
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 893 367,15

Participants (13)

My booklet 0 0