NACLIM

-- What is NACLIM? -- The science -- NACLIM aims -- NACLIM objectives -- Core themes and work packages --

What is NACLIM?

NACLIM is a European FP7 collaborative project examining the North Atlantic Climate and assessing decadal climate forecasts. NACLIM has 18 participating institutions (and 1 third party) from nine countries. Its work is defined by 5 core themes and 12 work packages. The project started in October 2012 and will run for 4.25 years, until January 2017.

The science

The North Atlantic Ocean is one of the most important drivers for the global ocean circulation and its variability on time scales beyond inter-annual. Global climate variability is, to a large extent, triggered by changes in the North Atlantic sea surface state. The quality and skill of climate predictions depends crucially on a good knowledge of the northern sea surface temperatures (SST) and sea ice distributions.

On a regional scale, these parameters strongly impact on weather and climate in Europe, determining precipitation patterns and strengths, as well as changes in temperature and wind patterns. Knowledge of these factors, and of their development in the years to come, is of paramount importance for society and key economic sectors, which have to base their planning and decisions on robust climate information. NACLIM will contribute to this goal.

NACLIM aims

To investigate and quantify the predictability on interannual to decadal time scales of the climate in the North Atlantic/European sector related to North Atlantic/Arctic Ocean surface state (SST and sea ice) variability and change.

NACLIM will partly build on the multi-model decadal prediction experiments currently performed by a number of leading European and worldwide research institutions as part of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). Rather than running climate forecasts within the project, NACLIM will analyze the CMIP5 predictions and critically assess their quality for the near-future stage of atmospheric and oceanic quantities.

NACLIM objectives

To quantify the uncertainty of state-of-the-art climate forecasts by evaluating the ability to model the most important oceanic and atmospheric processes in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, and by comparing key quantities with observations
To optimize the present North Atlantic observation system by evaluating the impact of its components on the quality and quality control of model forecasts, and their value in determining the present ocean state and its past variability
To quantify the impact on oceanic ecosystems and on European urban societies of predicted North Atlantic/Arctic Ocean variability
To critically assess the use of climate forecast parameters for use by stakeholders in society, politics and industry

NACLIM core themes and work packages

Full information about the NACLIM core themes and work packages can be found on the NSCLIM website.

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Core Theme	Work Package
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1. Predictability of key oceanic and atmospheric quantities	1.1 Predictability of the North Atlantic/Arctic ocean surface state and key oceanic quantities controlling it
	1.2 Predictability of the atmosphere related to the North Atlantic/Arctic
	1.3 Mechanisms of ocean surface state variability
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2. Monitoring of North Atlantic parameters	2.1 Exchanges across the Greenland-Scotland-Ridge
	2.2 Transports in the subpolar North Atlantic
	2.3 Joint model - observational data comparison
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3. Initialization of prediction systems with ocean observations	3.1 Suitability of the ocean observing system components for initialization
	3.2 Impact of Arctic initialization on forecast skill
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4. Impact on the oceanic ecosystem and urban societies	4.1 Impact on the oceanic ecosystem
	4.2 Impact on urban societies
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5. Dissemination of NACLIM and coordination across EUPORIAS, NACLIM and SPECS	5.1 Scientific coordination
	5.2 Outreach, dissemination and climate services
	5.3 Coordination across EUPORIAS, NACLIM and SPECS projects
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CLIVAR's involvement with NACLIM

CLIVAR is strongly involved with core theme 5 (Dissemination of NACLIM and coordination across EUPORIAS, NACLIM and SPECS), work package 5.2 (Outreach, dissemination and climate services).

Work package 5.2 objectives

To identify user needs for climate related information with respect to the NACLIM goals: the effects of North Atlantic sea surface temperature and sea ice variability on North Atlantic/European seasonal to decadal climate variability.
To communicate NACLIM efforts and results to other projects in the scientific community in order to generate effective climate services for the North Atlantic and Europe.
To communicate NACLIM efforts and results to end-users such as decision makers, industry, and the general public in order to generate effective climate services for the North Atlantic and Europe.
To promote best practices in terms of climate services and user requirements.