Addressing knowledge gaps in climate science, in support of IPCC reports
Actions should address only one of the following sub-topics:
a) Improving the understanding of key climate processes for reducing uncertainty in climate projections and predictions: Actions should achieve better understanding of key processes, and associated feedbacks, affecting the climate-Earth system over time, in order to improve climate projections and predictions and constrain climate sensitivity estimates. Actions may cover processes such as cloud and aerosol dynamics and cloud-aerosol interactions, biogeochemical cycles and their evolution under a changing climate, ocean dynamics and circulation, dynamic interactions between atmosphere, land, ocean and ice (both sea ice and land ice), troposphere-stratosphere coupling, external forcing and other relevant processes.
The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 6 million and EUR 8 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.
b) Tipping points: Actions should result in better understanding of abrupt climate change, of climate-related Earth system tipping elements and their tipping points, and associated impacts. Actions should identify safe operating spaces, accompanied – where relevant – with long-term strategies for preventing or mitigating impacts. Actions should also advance the understanding of respective impacts and early warning indicators.
The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 6 million and EUR 8 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.
c) Ice-core drilling in East Antarctica: Actions should build on the outcomes of the Horizon 2020 project 'Beyond EPICA' (http://www.beyondepica.eu) and contribute to the European endeavour which aims to obtain a 1.5 million year old ice-core from East Antarctica. This will allow to better constrain the climate response to future GHG emissions and to unravel key linkages between the carbon cycle, ice sheets, the oceans and the atmosphere.
In line with the strategy for EU international cooperation in research and innovation (COM(2012)497), international cooperation is encouraged.
The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU in the range of EUR 10 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.
Better understanding of the key processes controlling the climate-Earth system is fundamental in order to further improve climate projections, reduce uncertainty in climate sensitivity calculations, enhance understanding of frequency and strength of extreme weather events, and assess more accurately the impacts of climate change related to the proximity, rate, reversibility and tipping points of abrupt climate change, and the identification of safe operating spaces. Furthermore, future climate scenarios strongly benefit from the combined use of models and paleo-reconstructions conducted in Polar Regions as they allow a better understanding of how the climate system worked, both regionally and globally, during abrupt climatic transitions and under warmer or colder than present day conditions.
The project results are expected to contribute to:
- supporting major international scientific assessments such as the IPCC;
- increase confidence in climate change projections;
- providing added-value to decision and policy makers;
- sustaining Europe's leadership in climate science.