1. Status of the project Met Office 14/09/2015
Carlo Buontempo,
SMHI
EUPORIAS Science coordinator
Met Office
14/09/2015
Hello welcome.

2.
EUPORIAS: EUropean Provision Of Regional Impact Assessment on a Seasonal-to-decadal timescales;
EUPORIAS is financed by the European Commission through the Seventh Framework Programme for Research (Theme Six, Environment) – running from November 2012 to January 2017.
Prototypes of climate impact prediction services on seasonal to decadal timescales
Co-production between producers and users;
Project vision: Increase the ability of EU business and authorities to make effective decisions in climate-sensitive sectors.
If needed this helps explain what is EUPORIAS mandate (this is not needed for SPECS talk).
It worth stressing the ECOMS nature of the project and make reference to NACLIM and SPECS.
It also worth stressing that a new coordination and support action has now been funded and existing as well as future climate service initiatives will be coordinated through this mechanism called
ECOMS 2 2

3. Overview Type of Information Time scale Scope of EUPORIAS
Results depend on the evolution of anthropogenic forcing and other factors
Results depend on the initial conditions of slow process and long-term changes
Results depending on the initial conditions
Scenarios
Climate change projections
Probabilistic seasonal forecast
Outlook
Probabilistic weather forecast
IPCC …
This may not be needed but for WGSIP could be useful to stress the fact that EUPORIAS focuses explicitly on the seasonal and decadal time-scales.
Weather forecast
WMO GPCs: e.g. ECMWF, Met Office, Meteo France,...
Forecast
ECMWF, National Met Services
GFS, UM, HIRLAM HARMONIE, …
Minutes
Hours
Day
Week
Month
Season
Years
Decades
Time scale

4. There are two points to mention here:
1)We have tried, as much as possible, to clarify to the users t their role at any given time in the project. This was to engage them more fully and give them clarity of what the project expected from them and what they should expect from the project.
2) We have made good progress and the project is largely on track. The performance of the prototypes, which are one of the most apparent outcome of EUPORIAS, have been assessed during the hidcast and now they are about to enter the semi-operational phase. This is good in terms of timing as the provision of Seasonal prediciton from ECMWF may help make the transition from a one off exercise into a longer lived experiment.

5. Assessing users’ needs with regard to S2DCP
Range of activities to assess needs across European sectors;
80 interviews and 450+ survey responses: mainly private companies & government organisations; larger companies working at the national and international level;
Complex landscape of users: different decision-making processes within and across organisations/sectors and hence, different needs;
Key findings:
Few users of seasonal forecasts in the energy, water, transport, health, agriculture, and insurance sectors; no use of decadal climate predictions;
Seasonal forecasts mainly used as qualitative information to help frame (to different extents) decision-making in the organisations;
Perceived barriers linked to lack of reliability but also tradition of performing historical analysis and difficulty in integrating into existing operational models; lack of awareness and accessibility by some end-users.
Output:
One of the most visible outcome of the project up to one is associated to the activities of WP12. This WP focussed on the understanding of user needs. A large number of interviews have been conducted in local languages, transcribed, translated into English and analysed. Joinly with the results of the online survey they constitute one of the richest piece of evidence about the current use of climate prediction in Europe.

6. Assessing users’ needs with regard to S2DCP
Potential for using S2DCP (providing reliability is ensured):
Many interested in using seasonal forecasts e.g. to help improve planning of activities and decision-making processes;
Some organisations (n=18) interested inter-annual/decadal predictions (mainly in the transport, energy and forestry sectors);
However, the potential ways in which these decadal predictions could be used differ e.g. improve efficiency of operations; understand and assess future risk conditions; develop more accurate asset management plans; understand if estimated CC projections/scenarios are on track;
Variables of interest: temperature, precipitation, wind, humidity, & solar radiation; different (but finer) temporal/spatial resolutions;
Final report available at:
Bruno Soares, M. & Dessai, S. (in review) 'Exploring the use of seasonal climate forecasts in Europe through expert elicitation' Climate Risk Management.
Bruno Soares, M. & Dessai, S. (in preparation) ‘Tracing the uses of seasonal climate forecasts for decision-making in Europe’.
This is just to:
Highlight some of the top level messages emerging from the analysis of the interview
link to the deliverables and the paper that Marta led on.

7. Downscaling of global seasonal forecasts
Statistical downscaling over Europe (+ bias correction)
bias corrected seasonal hindcast (via ECOMS UDG)
statistical downscaling has a strong focus on the
hydropower sector and hydrological applications
climate indices on seasonal scale
3 river systems in northern Sweden
Combined statistical and dynamical downscaling over eastern Africa
focus on June-September rainfall in Ethiopia
5-month hindcast initialised on May 1st
EC-EARTH re-run of S4 (model levels needed)
, 15 members
5 RCM groups downscale EC-EARTH (0.22deg)
1 RCM group: downscaling GloSea5
1 group: statistical downscaling (EC-EARTH)
the first results (3 RCMs) are available
JJAS rainfall in Ethiopia
GCM/RCM hindcast + obs
One of the most researchy question of EUPORIAS was linked to the value dynamical downscaling could add to seasonal predictions. We ran a specific case-study over the GHA region .
Results suggest RCM improves the generally skill of the predictions. We now need to assess whether the benefits induced by this methodology overcome the high computational cost these have especially when compared to statistical downscaling

8. Tools in SPECS/EUPORIAS
Tools in SPECS/EUPORIAS
SpecsVerification New verification metrics and significance assessment Uni Exeter
easyVerification Application of verification metrics to large datasets MeteoSwiss
ECOMS-UDG / downscaleR Access to seasonal forecast data, calibration and downscaling
Uni Cantabria
Series of R packages that can be used in conjunction to analyze seasonal forecasts
In progress: tutorial with worked examples for forecast verification using the above R packages

9. WP33: To identify effective strategies for communicating uncertainty that meet the needs of a user base varying in expertise and thresholds for action.
Preference for different types of format influenced by both existing familiarity and statistical expertise.
Second order uncertainty (reliability, skill) not being clearly communicated to many users.
Acknowledgements
Visualisations from top to bottom
(1) Error bars representing spread in a dummy stream flow forecast, provided by DHI
(2) Map showing predicted likelihood of above average seasonal temperature, provided by Meteo Swiss
(3) Bar graph illustrating predicted likelihood of stream flow being above average, average, or below average (dummy forecast), provided by DHI
NOTE: THESE EXAMPLES WERE PROVIDED BY DHI AND METEO SWISS FOR USE IN EUPORIAS USER NEEDS SURVEYS AND SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN TO REFLECT THE METHODS OF COMMUNICATION UTILISED BY THESE ORGANISATIONS.
Organisations vary considerably in tolerance for false alarms and amount of ‘in house’ data processing conducted.
Example visualisations created for EUPORIAS user need surveys by Top DHI, Middle MeteoSwiss, Bottom DHI
Andrea Taylor et al. Communicating uncertainty in seasonal and inter-annual climate forecasts in Europe. Being submitted to Phil. Transactions of the Royal Society A

10. Micro-sites
As we said before most of the work within the prototype has been completed. A series of microsite have been developed on EUPORIAS website to present the prototypes and the sectors in which they operate. The microsite are bilingual (local language of the stakeholder and English) This will soon be officially launched.

11. This is just to present the work of Honiton’ Symposium.
The idea was to lock in a nice village in the English countryside some 30 people in representation of users, providers, and intermidiaries and identify with them a few key principles that can help make a climate service a success.
You can find more information on our website but to summarise all of them in just a couple of sentences:
Consider that a service needs at least two people and that you need to acknowledge there is a recipient of the service and they have relevant knowledge, experience and motivation that need to be accounted for.
Maintain a flexible setup and allow for modification in the scope and in the outcome in response to a continuous set of feedbacks.