The CELSIUS project aims to provide new climate change projections for Middle East/North Africa (MENA), including the eastern Mediterranean and Cyprus, at improved spatial precision and emphasis on temperature extremes and the warming over urban areas. The WRF model is used as a regional climate model (RCM) to dynamically downscale, first, meteorological re-analyses in a series of multi-physics simulations over the MENA region. An optimal for this region WRF model configuration will be obtained, by selecting the best performing (in comparison to observations) physical parametrisations set-up.
This model set-up will be used in 20-year simulations to downscale, to 16 km, for the recent past and the mid-21st century, climate fields from the CIMP5 globa climate models forced by the RCP8.5 business as usual IPCC emissions scenario. The CIMP5 boundary conditions will be selected among those models that represent more realistically temperature extremes during the recent past or predict the strongest heat extremes for the future. A further downscaling with the WRF will follow, driven by the MENA results, down to 1-4 km, over selected cities around the region (including Nicosia for Cyprus), in order take into account the urban heat island effect. The additional urban heating adds to the climate change warming and might bring certain areas closer to the intolerable for humans 35 degrees threshold of the wet-bulb temperature (an indicator of both warm and humid conditions).

The Project is funded by the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation(RPF), under the RESTART«ΝΗΣΙΔΕΣ ΑΡΙΣΤΕΙΑΣ» Pilon ΙΙ (EXCELLENCE)

Contacts

Panos Hadjinicolaou, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Tel. +357 222 08 700    |    +357 222 08 627