EUPHEME

What is the EUPHEME project about?

The EUPHEME project is developing a scientific capability to help societies throughout Europe become more resilient to extremes of weather in a changing climate. This scientific capability will provide a wide range of interested user groups with information about how climate change is affecting the risks of extreme weather. To achieve this EUPHEME is developing new methods to attribute the risks of extreme events to human and natural causes. It is also building a scientific platform to host data and support data processing and is providing tools to disseminate the results of such attribtion assessments to a variety of stakeholders.

The project (see diagram) is organized in such a way that a stakeholder panel informs the development of methodologies which in turn inputs into the development of a platform for the production of attribution assessments. These, in turn, are delivered to stakeholders and feedback from the stakeholder panel is then used to improve methodologies further. In this way, the project structure aims to facilitate a continual improvement of attribution capability for Europe.

Highlights

• Researchers at CEA/CNRS have developed new methods for attributing extreme weather events by calculating the characteristics of the weather patterns involved. This enables a more detailed understanding of how weather events are affected by climate change, for example by understanding how climate change has made heatwaves hotter given particular weather patterns.
• A new platform has been developed by KNMI that enables researchers from different institutions to pool their data and analyses. This will facilitate more comprehensive assessments of extreme weather events by combining attribution methods developed at different institutes.
• An attribution analysis by the Met Office showing a substantial effect of climate change on the 2018 European heatwave was presented at the UNFCCC climate change negotations in Katowice, Poland in December 2018 and was widely reported in the press. This is a good example of how the EUPHEME work is eliciting interest from both policy makers and the media.

Keywords / hashtags

Keywords: Climate change, global warming, extreme weather, attribution, climate services.
Hashtags: #attribution #extremeweather #climateservices

Potential societal impacts

EUPHEME is delivering a prototype attribution service to enhance the development more broadly of future climate services. As well as incorporating information about past and future climate it is important that climate services also consider the current climatic situation which is what an attribution service aims to do. Such a service will support endeavours for societies to become more resilient to extreme weather under climate change. This supports the UN Sustainable Development Goal on climate action by strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards. A clearer identification of the effects of climate change on extreme weather also supports efforts to integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning.

The role of JPI Climate

JPI Climate has contributed to the success of the project through its organisation of project administration, its championing of the projects funded under ERA4CS and in its organisation and facilitation of meetings for projects to analyse aims and discuss outcomes.