MiKlip

The need for reliable conclusions about climate developments in the years and decades ahead keeps growing since, in politics, society and, particularly, commerce, planning timescales are usually set at around 10 years. They are a key requirement if industry and society are to be able to adapt more effectively to the future climate.

The funding project "Medium-Term Climate Prediction" (MiKlip), involves creating a modelling system to draw reliable conclusions across these timescales in terms of climate development, the climate changes we may expect and about extreme weather events. In many respects the modelling system that is to be developed will tread new ground, with major challenges in terms of improving and redeveloping the methodology. This is particularly true of defining the initial position, describing the processes that are key to medium-term climate prediction (e.g., by modelling the cryosphere and biosphere), improving spatial resolution by regionalisation, improving and adjusting statistical post-processing and, lastly, synthesising and validating the entire modelling system.

The present approach extends the range of research activities and measures for dealing with climate change in the framework of the High-Tech Strategy 2020 in the field of climate and energy. Based on the results, a second phase (MiKlip II) is currently pursuing the goal of providing a decadal climate prediction system and finally handing it over to the German Weather Service DWD for operational use.

On behalf of the BMBF (Unit 723 - "Global Change"), the Environment, Culture and Sustainability department of the DLR Project Management Agency supervised the funding measure MiKlip technically and administratively.