Collaboration between QCCCE and the Hadley Centre
Collaboration between the Queensland Climate Change Centre of Excellence (QCCCE) and the UK Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change, in cooperation with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES)—a joint institute of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Colorado in Boulder USA—will foster joint research into climate variability, climate change and climate systems.
The ACRE project
The project, Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE), which is the focus of collaboration between the two centres, will produce improved historical global climate reanalysis and surface data which, in turn, will vastly improve our ability to understand historical climate events and their impacts.
Dr Rob Allan, manager of the project, gave a presentation on ACRE (PDF, 790 kB) at the ‘Instrumental and Documentary Data in the Climate Reconstruction of the Past Millennium in Europe’ analytical workshop conducted by European Climate Millenium in Freiburg, Germany, from 29–31 August 2007.
What is climate ‘reanalysis’?
‘Reanalysis’ is the term given to a revolutionary technique used in modern climatology to produce an uninterrupted historical time-series of the complete three-dimensional state of the atmosphere. It involves reprocessing historical climate observations and, in turn, ‘feeding’ these into a numerical weather model to produce short-term forecasts.
The output from these forecasts thus fills in the gaps of the observation network both in time and space. The numerical model also calculates useful climate parameters such as latent heating, surface fluxes and vertical motion which, in themselves, are difficult to measure.
The advent of reanalysis allows climatologists to carry out atmospheric studies more accurately and quickly than ever before. The reanalysis data obtained can also be used to feed seamlessly into a wide range of impacts and applications models.
The ACRE reanalysis
As the ACRE reanalysis relies only on surface observations, and not on modern records such as satellite observations and upper-level readings, it can be uniformly extended much further back in time than other reanalysis studies.
The project will focus on recovery, extension, quality control and consolidation of global historical instrumental surface data (terrestrial and marine) covering the last ±200 years. It will build on expertise developed by the 20th Century Reanalysis Project to provide the basis for a reanalysis based on surface observations, with sufficient data to be valid back to the mid-19th century globally, and from the mid-18th century to the present over the North Atlantic – European region.
Benefits of the project
The benefits of using these data in climatic impacts and applications research will be immense. Databases of climatic variables over the last 100 to 250 years will give new perspectives on the most important global climatic change and variability issues. They will also help researchers learn more about the evolving spatial and temporal structure of important phenomena in the climate system, such as:
- the El Niño Southern Oscillation
- the Madden-Julian Oscillation
- the Antarctic Oscillation/Southern Annular Mode
- the Arctic Oscillation/Northern Annular Mode
- the North Atlantic Oscillation.
The results of the project will make it possible to address the nature, intensity and frequency of floods, storms and droughts, and their costs to society and governments, in ways not previously possible.
Commercial and business implications
For future reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, these datasets will serve as an observational counterpart when assessing recently produced ocean–atmosphere model integrations that simulate the effects of human activity on the 20th-century climate.
The availability of these products will also impinge on commercial activities and business applications, affecting climate-dependent industry sectors such as energy (e.g. supply/demand assessment, wind power generation); agriculture and forestry; water resource management; and insurance/reinsurance.
Knowledge of the variability of the earth’s climate and how it has changed over the last 100–250 years is also essential when developing policies, as it provides a relevant and reliable benchmark, against which to assess current and future climate change impacts, and mitigation and adaptation strategies.
Last updated 20 September 2007.
