ENSEMBLES project
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our YouTube video on ENSEMBLES.
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ENSEMBLES is a five-year climate change research project involving 66 partners from across Europe. Led by the Met Office, and funded by the European Commission, it has been studying the likely effects of climate change across Europe as a whole.
The project has:
- An ensemble prediction system giving the first probabilistic climate projections of temperature and rainfall changes this century;
- An assessment of the impact of climate change on a range of sectors including agriculture, health, energy, water resources and insurance relevant to decisions being made today;
- A clearer picture of the physical, chemical, biological and human-related feedbacks in the climate system and how to represent them in models that will increase certainty in climate predictions;
- The development of the first high resolution climate observation datasets for Europe that can be used to validate ensemble predictions.
E1 stabilisation scenario
The E1 stabilisation scenario, developed in ENSEMBLES, is the first of its kind to run an ensemble of Global Climate Models (GCMs).
E1 uses methodology from the next IPCC assessment review (AR5) on using concentrations and forcings (the warming influence of GHGs on the atmosphere) as a starting point. Modellers are then able to establish what level of emissions would relate to the stated concentrations, which lets scientists calculate what the likely temperature change might be. Realistic socio-economic scenarios, such as the level of development of renewable energy sources or population growth are then determined to match.
Ten European GCMs were run using E1, five including carbon cycle feedbacks. There is marked regional variability. For example, even within an average global temperature rise of 2 °C there is a much higher increase in the Arctic, with only a small rise across the Southern Ocean.
In addition, the 5 GCMs which model carbon cycle feedbacks were used to work backwards to calculate anthropogenic CO2 emissions from land, ocean and atmosphere carbon fluxes. They show that, to limit global mean temperature to below 2 °C, implied emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere at the end of the century fall close to zero in most cases. In one model — HadCM3C — the implied emissions fall below zero, indicating carbon sequestration exceeding emissions. The results of these 5 projections are shown below:
European cities temperature and rainfall data
A major theme of the research programme was to construct new temperature datasets for Europe, using a 25 km grid. Conditional probability density functions of seasonal temperature and rainfall anomalies for 32 capital cities have been calculated for the period 2021 to 2050 — a mid-point of 2035, within the lifetimes of many of us. These have been compared to a benchmark temperature based on 1961–90 data.
The results of this work and what it means for mean seasonal temperature change in individual cities are available here: ENSEMBLES climate projections for Europe (requires Flash)
Key impacts
The probabilistic approach applied to many of the impacts allows a more detailed analysis of timing and intensity of each of the issues. This is most useful for deciding adaptation measures and risk management in planning. All of these results have relevance to decisions that need to be taken by policymakers now.
| Sector | Impact area | Timescale | Region | Main impact |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Insurance | Property damage by windstorms | 2071–2100 | UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Benelux, Spain | 15% increase in storm loss potential |
| Winter wind storms | Seasonal | Europe | Increase in extremes over NW Europe | |
| Health | Heat stress | 21st century | Greece | Increase in heat stress and mortality from heatwaves |
| Forestry | Forest fires | 2025–2100 | Scandinavian Peninsula, the Kola Peninsula, Karelia and Finland (collectively known as Fenno-Scandia) | Increase from 20 to 35 days per year of fire risk |
| Bark beetles | 21st century | Scandinavia | Increase in damage. Loss of forests | |
| Water | Water resources for agriculture | 2061–90 | Poland | Decrease yield of wheat and potato |
| Lake levels | 21st century | Fenno-Scandia | Increase in winter, decrease in summer | |
| European rivers | 2071–2100 | Europe | Tiber and Vistula vulnerable — increase in water stress | |
| Agriculture | Wheat yields | 21st century | Mediterranean basin | 2010–2040 increase, 2050–2090 decrease |
| Nitrogen leaching | 2010–2090 | Portugal and Denmark | 20–40% probability of leaching increase and 20-40% yield decline in crops as a result | |
| Blue tongue | Seasonal | Northern Europe | Increase with increasing temperatures | |
| Natural environment | Palsa mires (permanently frozen peat) | 21st century | Scandinavia | 3 °C increase in temp and 10% increase in ppn lead to 80% loss by 2080 |
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