Climate Change
Research Line Coordination
The challenge posed by Climate Change has become the paramount issue of global sustainability, carrying significant implications for societies worldwide. Climate Change presents multifaceted inquiries, demanding advancements in Earth System understanding across decadal to millennial time scales to reduce uncertainty in climate scenario projections and enable objective policy assessments across various spatial and temporal dimensions. In this context, addressing Climate Change requires strong collaboration among all IDL’s Research Groups, with strong participation in research at national and international levels, as well as sustained community efforts in developing and maintaining monitoring systems, sophisticated numerical models, and extensive environmental datasets.
Over the past two decades, IDL has been involved in climate modelling European initiatives being an active contributor to regional simulations through EURO-CORDEX consortium. IDL envisages to bolster these contributions by producing extreme high-resolution climate change scenarios, namely through the new generation of kilometer-scale models for convection, Land Use and Climate Across Scales and URBan environments. IDL has also been partnering frequently with IPMA (Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera), to establish critical resources such as the EUMETSAT LandSAF and contribute to the development of the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) global model (EC-Earth).
Recognizing the importance of adaptation, IDL emphasizes research aimed at understanding climate change impacts on Earth systems and developing adaptation strategies. This includes assessing future climate conditions' impact on coastal evolution, interactions between climate change on health and fire regimes, and pressures on water resources. Significantly, an IDL team has successfully led the National Roadmap for Adaptation XXI between 2020 and 2024, with results now being used to feed a vast number of modelling studies in different disciplines. This endeavour will be relevant to maintain IDL as the most prominent national Research Unit to provide regional climate model assessments focusing on socioeconomically impactful climate extremes like floods, droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires.
IDL's research strategy in Climate Change combines fundamental Earth System science research with collaborative efforts in international consortia and policy-driven research with national partners. This strategy aims to advance Earth System representation in models, improve modelling and data assimilation capabilities, and make climate data useful across various applications. Collaborations with Portuguese private (e.g. The Navigator, E-Redes) and public institutions, including ANEPC, APA, and IPMA, underscore IDL's commitment to translating research outcomes into actionable insights for policymakers, local authorities, and stakeholders, facilitating informed decision-making in response to Climate Change challenges.