reclip:century - Project Background
To date, no transient climate simulations at high resolution and parameterized for the Alps and focusing Austria were available. Europe-wide simulations of the EU-project "ENSEMBLES" are available only at 20km resolution (http://www.ensembles-eu.org ). The REMO-UBA simulations with 10km grid spacing (http://www.remo-rcm.de/REMO-UBA.1189.0.html) published 2006 / 2007 by MPI-Hamburg were tailored for Germany and show less reliable results for the Alps – especially regarding precipitation.
Climate models are simplified approximations to reality. Many atmospheric, marine, surface- and subsurface processes are simulated, but not all in detail, since one has to deal with complex interactions at various spatial scales and different time periods As the continuous processes must be spatially and temporally discretized, sub-scale processes are disregarded. These drawbacks result in uncertainties, whose ranges need to be explored by comparing different climate simulations.
This requires applying different global climate models, different regional models as well as different greenhouse gas scenarios.
Funded by the Austrian Climate Research Program (ACRP)
Klima- und Energiefonds der Bundesregierung
Project number A760437