Current Networks

CORDEX - the CoOrdinated Regional climate Downscaling EXperiment under the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) aims to coordinate activities around the world to enable better comparison of regional models and downsclaing (history and background). The University of Bergen hosts the Coordination Office for Regional Activities WCRP-CORA. It promotes a set of standard regions and protocols have been agreed upon, e.g. using netCDF following the CF-conventions for the output ('CF' stands for climate and forecasting). CORDEX has provided a framework for much development of models and simulations, and more recently an increasing emphasis has been devoted to research through Flagship Pilot Studies (FPS). The network Euro-CORDEX (Jacob et al, 2020) is the European branch of CORDEX with focus on regional climate modelling over Europe. In 2021, CORDEX and WRCP are undergoing a transition to a new structure which is involves six 'homes' and lighthouse activities (link).

The European Climate Research Alliance (ECRA) is a network that has regional relevance through collaborative programmes such as the Arctic climate stability and change, high impact events, sea level rise, and changes in the hydrological cycle. Many of these topics are relevant in terms of regional climate modelling and downscaling.

The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) also involves some downscaling, e.g. through the assessment report Adapting in a Changing Arctic (AACA, 2017) - the Barents region.

The international ICNet (Infrastructure and Climate Network) started as a collaboration between engineers and climate scientists in USA and has now expanded globally. It's a bottom-up network driven by enthusiasm and willingness to engage with society and engineering. The main focus has been on transport infrastructure.

The legacy of earlier networks

The ClimatEurope network had an emphasis on climate services but also has some relevance to regional climate modelling. It hosted a series of seminars, webinars, festivals and 'webstinars'. The last of these took place in 2020.

The project COST-VALUE was dedicated to protocols on evaluating downscaling methods with an emphasis on empirical-statistical downscaling (ESD). Also COST-733 on weather patterns is relevant for both downscaling and analysis.

Other useful links and resources

The American GCM downscaled data portal may be a useful resource in addition to Climate Europe.

GCMeval tool is useful for comparing different global climate models/simulations.

The Norwegian Centre for Climate Services (NCCS) / Norsk Klimaservicesenter (KSS) provides a source for climate information and a bridge to the society.

Climate service partnership provides a forum for using regional climate data for decision-making.

The Global framework for Climate Services (GFCS) need results from regional climate modelling, and Disaster Risk reduction (DRR) has some overlapping aspects with climate services and extreme climate/weather events.