PREMIUM - Predictive Models for Extremes and High-impact Weather under Climate Change - Evaluation of the Multi-scale Impact of Soil - Atmosphere Feedbacks

Climate change has contributed to an increase in extreme weather events – including devastating heavy rains and dry spells. The increase in frequency and intensity of these events is of key importance to society due to their large impact through flooding and drought. Flood and extreme heat can cause a range of health impacts and risks. Despite recent advances in forecasting and climate monitoring, weather‐related disasters continue to kill or displace populations and damage property / infrastructure. Less severe weather events put an increasing strain on society, especially in countries with fragile economies.

The capability of predicting such dramatic events still is a great challenge. Significant progress has been made in terms of climate monitoring and weather and extreme event forecasting during recent years. However, many uncertainties remain, as illustrated by the inconsistent results given by current numerical weather and climate prediction models regarding the present and future distribution of e. g. precipitation.

Accurate prediction of the regional water cycle on weather and climate timescales has been found to be crucial to predicting hazardous weather. The lack of observations - insufficient time and spatial coverage - inadequate spatial resolution of models, misrepresentation, and poor understanding of physical processes and their interactions across multiple-space and time scales still hampers progress, for example, in the representation of Mesoscale Convective Systems (MCSs).