INTERACT

Duration: 01.09.2020 - 28.02.2025 Funding: FWF (Fonds z. Förderung d. wissensch. Forschung)

Weather fronts are an important link between large-scale and regional weather. Climate change affects the large-scale forcing of fronts, and likely fronts themselves. Therefore, the extreme weather associated with them is expected to change as well. But despite its relevance to extreme weather, research on fronts under climate change is only nascent. The central goal of INTERACT is to understand the role fronts under climate change play in scale interactions that generate extreme weather. Specifically, in international collaboration with colleagues from two Russian institutions, INTERACT will investigate: 1. How are regional extreme events at fronts influenced by internal variability and the interaction of dynamical phenomena across numerous scales? 2) How realistically are these phenomena, their interaction, and their influence on extreme events simulated in a hierarchy of climate models? 3. How do these phenomena, their interaction, and therefore the associated extreme events change in a warmer climate? To answer these research questions INTERACT uses the following approaches and methods: - sensitivity studies with global climate models; - simulations on selected regions with very high resolution regional climate models; - simulations of single extreme events under present and future climate conditions; - analysis of cyclones and fronts in observations and a hierarchy of climate models - development of new analysis methods; - process-based evaluation of climate models; - investigation of uncertainties in our knowledge of extreme weather in climate change. Innovation INTERACT will improve the process understanding of extreme weather in weather fronts and thus increase the credibility of simulations of such events in climate change. INTERACT will contribute to the World Climate Research Program's Grand Challenge on Extreme Weather, and to our understanding of weather in climate change. INTERACT will produce high-resolution climate model simulations under current and future climate conditions, including simulations of individual events. INTERACT will analyze the added value of high-resolution simulations with global and regional climate models, and in particular compare regional models with high-resolution global models and very high-resolution regional models. INTERACT will develop new analysis methods by linking the diagnosis of fronts with that of cyclones. INTERACT will explore uncertainties about our knowledge of extreme weather in climate change through innovative approaches, in particular by using a hierarchy of models and by developing physically consistent storylines.

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