De natuurlijke risico's van weer en klimaat: les extrêmes se touchent - Piet Termonia

De natuurlijke risico's van weer en klimaat:
        les extrêmes se touchent

                        Piet Termonia
                   Royal Meteorological Institute

    Koninklijke Academie voor Overzeese Wetenschappen, 28-2-2019

Royal Meteorological Institute: mission
  provide permanent services in order
  ● to insure the national security,

  ● to provide meteorological information to the population and

  ● to support the political authorities (Royal Decree of 31 December

    1986).

Meteorology is a challenge covering
      a wide range of scales

Natural risks
●   The floodings that took place from 12 november to 15 november 2010 costed 180
    million Euro in damage claims
●   Belgian insurance companies estimated the total of the damage claims due to the so-
    called Pentecost storm in 2014 at about 650 million Euro.
●   The 2003 European heat wave: eight consecutive days with temperatures of more
    than 40 °C (104 °F) were recorded in Auxerre, Yonne in early August 2003. Death toll
    exceeded 70,000 in Europe during the summer of 2003. Robine et al. (2008).

The scientific basis : the IPCC
    Assessment Reports

IPCC AR5 key climate risks

From global scale climate change to extreme events

      Meteorological phenomena                4 degrees
                                              difference
                                              per se are
                                              not relevant

                       The change
                       is felt here!

Numerical Earth system models

An application of supercomputing

NWP models compute weather maps
          in the future

Scientific progress in the global models (ECMWF):
each decade we see one day deeper into the future

Ensemble methods to estimate
        model error

The forecast for today (ECMWF)

At the local scale, extreme weather:
same technology for weather forecasting and climate

The CORDEX.be project
COmbining Regional climate Downscaling EXpertise in Belgium

                www.euro-cordex.be

A Belgian network

           Termonia et al., Climate Services, 2018

How well do we simulate precipitation?

“local” warming

We all agree that the occurrence of
extreme precipitation will increase

CORDEX Africa: Ethiopia

      Van Vooren et al, Int. J. Clim, 2018

CORDEX Central Asia
           https://www.projectafter.net
  1980-2017 ALARO-KMI Ts

  1980-2017 CRU Ts

      difference

                                          Kotova et al., Climate Services, (2018)

.beyond projections as input for
     local-impact models

Heat waves and urban effects
        CORDEX.be

       Termonia et al., Climate Services, 2018

At the local scale, extreme weather:
same technology for weather forecasting and climate

   www.meteo.be                      www.meteo.be “in 2063”

RMI-UGent Collaboration with the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology (XIEG), China:
               Mountain Oasis Desert System (MODS)

                                                            oasis effect

                                                            total effect :
                                                       oasis AND urban effect

                                                            urban effect

                                              (Peng et al. 2019)

summary
●   les extrêmes se touchent: If we want to understand
    the consequences of climate change at the global
    scale we need to exploit our knowlegde of weather.
    The open questions are related to climate impact,
    which is felt through the changes in frequency and
    amplitudes “extreme weather events in a changing
    climate”
●   The modeling technology to study the impacts is the
    same as numerical weather prediction.
●   There is an increasing demand from society for
    knowlegde on climate-change impacts. This is called
    climate services.

Thank you for your attention!