INTEGRATE

Interactions between tropical monsoons and extra-tropical climate variability and extremes

Call 2015 with Belmont ForumSocietal transformation

INTEGRATE studies “teleconnections” that link regional climates and alter the risk of climate/weather extremes. INTEGRATE evaluates the ability of climate models to simulate them. We focus on linkages between polar and tropical (especially monsoon) regions because of the societal importance of monsoon regions and knowledge gaps for these regions. Additionally, we consider other sources of variability that affect these regions. Another focus of the project is on decadal to century timescales, necessitating the use of tree-ring and historical documentary records alongside the instrumental climate record. Our work has suggested linkages between Tibetan Plateau precipitation and the Northern Hemisphere temperature variations over the last 2000 years.

INTEGRATE’s reconstruction of Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV), confirms that natural variability inherent to the climate system, so not being caused by an exteral mechanism like changes in solar activity, is present throughout the past 1200 years (Wang et al., 2017, and figure above).
This reconstruction is used to estimate the influenceof the AMV on East Asian temperature, alongside the contributions from solar, volcanic and human activities (Wang et al., 2018).

Project leader

Timothy Osborn

Professor of Climate Science and Research Director of the Climatic Research Unit

I am Timothy Osborn, the lead principal investigator of INTEGRATE, a climatologist and Professor of Climate Science at the University of East Anglia. My interests are to understand how we can learn about past and possible future climates by integrating the information we can obtain from various sources, namely climate proxies, instrumental climate observations and climate models. Within the climate proxy domain, my particular interest is in the use of tree-ring measurements. The INTEGRATE project combines all these elements and applies them to a region of great societal importance.

Project consortium

University of East Anglia
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Justus Liebig University Giessen

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INTEGRATE brings together three institutions: University of East Anglia (UEA), UK; Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources (NIEER), Chinese Academy of Sciences, China; and Justus Liebig University Giessen (UG) with complementary experience. The research centres at these intitutions working on INTEGRATE are the Climatic Research Unit (UEA), the Key Laboratory of Desert and Desertification (NIEER) and the Department of Geography (UG). UEA has a strong track record with long, temperature‐sensitive tree‐ring records and with using climate models such as HadGEM2 and IGCM to understand large‐scale climate dynamics. NIEER has proven experience in proxy and historical climate evidence across the globe but especially in South and East Asia. UG has expertise in
paleoclimate modelling, historical model‐data comparisons and analysis of weather and
climate extremes. The consortium also benefits from long‐standing collaborations with
unfunded partners with relevant experience and additional data: The Tree‐Ring Laboratory,
Lamont‐Doherty Earth Observatory; Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology, Russia; Sukachev
Institute of Forest, Russia; PAGES2k initiatives from Europe, Asia and the Arctic.

Documents

INTEGRATE is assessing the ability of climate models to simulate these observed behaviours (Ratna et al., under review 2019). The project has already contributed to at least 16 published studies. Published papers are listed here. (https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/projects/integrate/#pubs)

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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.