
HiWAVES3
High Impact Weather Events in EurAsia Selected, Simulated and Storified
The weather impacts our society in many ways. In HiWAVES3 we study high impact weather events, i.e. the events that most severely impact society. For example, we identify these events by calculating river levels, wind and solar energy yields and crop yields using thousands of years of global daily weather generated by state-of-the-art climate models and selecting the most extreme cases. Climate model data are used because generally the observational record is relatively short, which limits the possibility of sampling and studying extreme events. We study the meteorological conditions leading to the extreme societal impacts, the effect of climate change and the predictability of these events. Stories of these events are created for communication purposes.
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HIWAVES3 has generated a novel dataset of climate data totalling 24.000 years of global daily weather using two global climate models (EC-Earth v2.3, HadGEM2-ES).It forms an excellent resource to study extreme high impact events in current and warmer climate conditions.
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HIWAVES3 identified meteorological events leading to extreme low wind and solar energy production and simultaneous high electricity demand in Europe.Furthermore, the impact of climate change on extreme low and high river levels globally was calculated.
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HiWAVES3 illustrates how high impact events might arisefrom meteorological conditions that are not considered extreme.

About
The weather impacts our society in many ways. In HiWAVES3 we study high impact weather events, i.e. the events that most severely impact society. For example, we identify these events by calculating river levels, wind and solar energy yields and crop yields using thousands of years of global daily weather generated by state-of-the-art climate models and selecting the most extreme cases. Climate model data are used because generally the observational record is relatively short, which limits the possibility of sampling and studying extreme events. We study the meteorological conditions leading to the extreme societal impacts, the effect of climate change and the predictability of these events. Stories of these events are created for communication purposes.
The design of a robust future energy system based on a large share of variable renewable energy resources will need to account for changing weather conditions. Changing weather conditions lead to low production and high demand in the entire European domain as identified in this project. The ensemble climate impact modelling approach implemented in this project provides more accurate estimates of risks by sampling a larger space of possible weather conditions. This project helps support SDG’s food, water, energy and safety.
Project leader
My name is Karin van der Wiel. I worked as a postdoc on the HiWAVES3 project. I joined the project because I am interested in the impact of changing weather conditions to society at large. I develop methods for investigating extreme events, try to understand internal variability and climate change, and investigate societal risk related to weather to contribute to a society resilient to `bad’ weather conditions.
Project consortium
Centre for international climate research
Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
University of Exeter
Beijing Normal University
Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Project partners are climate scientists from University of Exeter (UK), BNU (CN) and KNMI (NL), agricultural scientists from IIT Gandhinagar (IN) and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), and economic scientists from CICERO (NO).Climate scientists from KNMI and Exeter created large ensemble experiments with two global state-of-the-art climate models. At
KNMI these were used to study extreme events in relation to the energy transition and impacts on extreme hydrological events. At Exeter the impact of Arctic sea ice on midlatitude weather was investigated. Scientists at CAS calculated global wheat yields, which were used to calculate global food prices by CICERO.
Documents
News & Events
Parent programme
Call 2015
Call for Climate Services Collaborative Research action on Climate Predictability and Inter-regional Linkages
Climate Services aim at providing more reliable climate information for the near future (months to decades) relevant for local and regional users. Within this broad context, variability of polar and tropical systems affects a large proportion of the world population. This call with the Belmont Forum aimed to contribute to the overall challenge of developing climate services with a focus on inter-regional linkages role in climate variability and predictability. Eight multi-national projects have been selected for funding through this call.
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