ENEA contributes to the development of the global Earth System Models of the European consortium EC-Earth.
ENEA improvements in the representation of land surface-atmosphere interaction processes led to a significant increase of model prediction skill over scales ranging from weather to seasonal and decadal. ENEA contributed with EC-Earth global climate projections to the sixth phase of CMIP (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6) of WCRP (World Climate Research Programme), which formed the basis of the latest IPCC (Intergovernamental Panel on Climate Change) ) assessment report. Climate projections such as the ones produced by CMIP projects are used by policy-makers around the world to develop appropriate climate and economic policies.
ENEA studies also what drives polar climate and how this climate might change in the future. Despite remote, the polar regions exert strong influence on the climate at lower latitudes because of the highly complex and interconnected nature of the Earth System.
Representing sea ice variability, the higher layers of the atmosphere, and atmosphere-ice-ocean coupling in Antarctica is to-date one of the great challenges faced by the scientific international community.
We study the large-scale (100km or more) coupling between atmosphere and ocean via sea ice.
We use CMIP models such as HadGEM3 to simulate plausible scenarios of atmosphere-ice-ocean interactions in Antarctica to: i) advance our knowledge of the underlying physical mechanisms governing high-latitude climate variability, and ii) develop further CMIP models to obtain an ever more realistic representation of atmospheric and oceanic processes.
By doing so, we contribute to understanding and alleviating known model biases. This reduces the uncertainty of current climate projections and aids policy-makers in taking better-informed decisions.
The energy system is strongly influenced by climatic variables (temperature, wind, humidity) and accurate forecasting is critical for the management of energy networks and supplies. In collaboration with industrial partners (ENEL, TERNA, ALPERIA), international research and modelling have been conducted to improve the ability to predict future events related to energy operations and efficiency.
We are working on developing innovative techniques for multi-model combination in order to achieve the highest possible accuracy for seasonal climate forecasts. Multi-model ensembles include forecasts produced by climate models developed independently by the European, American and Asian scientific communities.
By using latest developments in monitoring services, we use the emerging land data sets to derive novel set of observational constraints on land climate interactions and biophysical feedback. We use this improved understanding as an essential knowledge for the improvement of the modeling and of the prediction capability in the framework of the European Community Earth system model (EC-Earth).
The analysis of climate variability aimed to the study of feedbacks between atmosphere and other components of the Earth system is a major task facing the climate community. In this context, we are significantly contributing to improve understanding and quantification of interactions and feedbacks in the global climate system that could enhance our capability to predict and project climate variations.