MED-CORDEX initiative for Mediterranean Climate studies.

Paolo M. Ruti (1) , Samuel Somot (2) , F. Giorgi (3) , Clotilde Dubois (2) , Emmanouil Flaounas (4) , A. Obermann (5) , A. Dell’aquila (6) , G. Pisacane (6) , A. Harzallah (7) , E. Lombardi (6) , B. Ahrens (5) , N. Akhtar (5) , Antoinette Alias (2) , Thomas Arsouze (8) , R. Aznar (9) , Sophie Bastin (10) , J. Bartholy (11) , Karine Béranger (8) , Jonathan Beuvier (2) , Sophie Bouffies-Cloché (2) , J. Brauch (5) , W. Cabos (12) , S. Calmanti (6) , Jean-Christophe Calvet (2) , A. Carillo (6) , D. Conte (13) , E. Coppola (3) , V. Djurdjevic (14) , Philippe Drobinski (15) , A. Elizalde-Arellano (16) , M. Gaertner (17) , P. Galàn (18) , C. Gallardo (17) , S. Gualdi (13) , M. Goncalves (19) , O. Jorba (20) , G. Jordà (21) , Blandine L’heveder (15) , Cindy Lebeaupin-Brossier (2) , Lu Li (22) , G. Liguori (12) , P. Lionello (23) , Diego Maciàs (24) , P. Nabat (2) , B. Onol (25) , B. Raikovic (26) , Karim Ramage (27) , F. Sevault (2) , G. Sannino (28) , M. V. Struglia (28) , A. Sanna (13) , C. Torma (3) , V. Vervatis (29)

1 WMO - World Meteorological Organization
2 CNRM - Centre national de recherches météorologiques
3 ICTP - Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics [Trieste]
4 NOA - National Observatory of Athens
5 IAU - Institut für Atmosphäre und Umwelt [Frankfurt/Main]
6 ENEA Ente per le Nuove Technologie Energia e Ambiente, Centro Ricerche Casaccia
7 INSTM - Institut National des Sciences et Technologies de la Mer [Salammbô]
8 UME - Unité de Mécanique
9 Puertos de l’Estado
10 SPACE - LATMOS
11 Department of Meteorology [Budapest]
12 UAH - Universidad de Alcalá - University of Alcalá
13 CMCC - Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change
14 University of Belgrade [Belgrade]
15 LMD - Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (UMR 8539)
16 MPI-M - Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie
17 ICAM - Instituto de Ciencias Ambientales [Toledo]
18 UPM - Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
19 UPC - Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya [Barcelona]
20 BSC - CNS - Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputacion
21 IMEDEA - Institut Mediterrani d'Estudis Avancats
22 X - École polytechnique
23 Department of Physics [Lecce]
24 IES - JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability
25 ITÜ - Istanbul Technical University
26 Faculty of Physics and Meteorology [Belgrade]
27 IPSL - Institut Pierre-Simon-Laplace
28 ENEA - Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development
29 NKUA - National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

The Mediterranean is expected to be one of the most prominent and vulnerable climate change “hot spots” of the 21st century, and the physical mechanisms underlying this finding are still not clear. Furthermore complex interactions and feedbacks involving ocean-atmosphere-land-biogeochemical processes play a prominent role in modulating the climate and environment of the Mediterranean region on a range of spatial and temporal scales. Therefore it is critical to provide robust climate change information for use in Vulnerability/Impact/Adaptation assessment studies considering the Mediterranean as a fully coupled environmental system. The Med-CORDEX initiative aims at coordinating the Mediterranean climate modeling community towards the development of fully coupled regional climate simulations, improving all relevant components of the system, from atmosphere and ocean dynamics to land surface, hydrology and biogeochemical processes. The primary goals of Med-CORDEX are to improve understanding of past climate variability and trends, and to provide more accurate and reliable future projections, assessing in a quantitative and robust way the added value of using high resolution and coupled regional climate models. The coordination activities and the scientific outcomes of Med-CORDEX can produce an important framework to foster the development of regional earth system models in several key regions worldwide.

Domains: Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics [physics.ao-ph]; Sciences of the Universe [physics]; Earth Sciences; Climatology

Paolo M. Ruti, Samuel Somot, F. Giorgi, Clotilde Dubois, Emmanouil Flaounas, et al.. MED-CORDEX initiative for Mediterranean Climate studies.. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2016, 97 (7), pp.1187-1208. ⟨10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00176.1⟩. ⟨insu-01241426⟩