Eidgenössisches Departement des Innern EDI Bundesamt für Meteorologie und Klimatologie MeteoSchweiz Climate as a service, Christof Appenzeller Mischa Croci-Maspoli, Paul Della-Marta, Andreas Fischer, Felix Fundel, Reidun Gangsto, Martin Hirschi, Heike Kunz, Anne Kress, Stephan Nyeki, Wolfgang Müller, Ines Röser, Simon Scherrer, Sibylle Studer, Christoph Spirig, Sandy Ubl, Andre Walser, Bettina Weibel, Andreas Weigel, Elias Zubler
Climate services on international level Global Framework for Climate Services Global partnership of governments Enabling joined forces to improve climate services Observations, modeling & research Secretariat in Switzerland European National Meteorological Services Various joint programs on observational systems and weather forecasts. Establishing common strategies for Climate Services at European NHMSs. 2009 2011 E-Obs 2
Collaboration on national level NCCR Climate National Centre for Competence in Research Climate 2000 2012 C2SM Center for Climate Systems Modeling 2009 Funding: SNF Funding: ETH, MeteoSwiss, EMPA, ART 3
Eidgenössisches Departement des Innern EDI Bundesamt für Meteorologie und Klimatologie MeteoSchweiz What is the essence of a national climate service? Components of a climate service illustrated with NCCR Climate results from MeteoSwiss. How NCCR Climate helped to prepare MeteoSwiss for climate service duties.
Normative, open How to deal with norm / reference-values under climate change? probability of a summer mean temperature to be above the norm Scherrer et al. (2006) MeteoSwiss is currently updating the norm period to 1981-2010, but will maintain the 1961-1990 values as well. High quality time series and norm values are provided for free. Political steps are currently undertaken towards a more complete data liberalization. 5
Timely, routinely Real time climate monitoring using gridded data sets. JJA 2003 temperature: deviation from norm. Absolute and in stddevs. calculated in Sept. 2003. Schär et al. (2004) MeteoSwiss is providing climate monitoring products for Switzerland now on a routine basis as fast as possible. 6
Sustainable, reliable Is there a use in seasonal forecasts? Do seasonal forecasts harm your decisions? conventional Statistical calibration of seasonal forecasts to get reliable predictions. calibrated help neutral harm MeteoSwiss is continuously issuing global seasonal forecasts to users since 2002, to the public since 2004. Weigel et al. (2009) 7
State of the art, scientific Closing the gap between seasonal forecasts and climate change scenarios. Correlation of decadal forecasts with observations additionally to the linear trend (year 2-5). harm neutral help Gangsto et al., accepted Is it possible to provide better estimates for the current and upcoming climate? 8
Connected, coordinative The CH2011 Initiative www.ch2011.ch Only a common, concerted effort made this possible. 9 9
Applied, user specific Coupling of seasonal forecast data of European winter storms to SwissRe loss model Expected loss of total insured value. Limited number of consistent observations a challenge. Della-Marta et al. (2010) The large archive of reforecasts of seasonal predictions could help to identify potential improvements in winter storm risk estimates. SwissRe is working on a next generation loss model. 10
Swiss Alpine and Swiss specific quantities Trends in number of snow days with height. Scherrer et al. (2004) Switzerland is subject to substantial year to year and decadal variability additionally to climate change. 11
General public, broad audience Warning of extreme events: probabilistic weather forecasts based on a ensemble limited area model (COSMO-LEPS) Probabilities and calibration based on 20 years of reforecasts 3h precip (mm) calibrated 3h precip (mm) raw Operational, used for operational warnings SMS, www, authorities 12
Honest Climate is inherently uncertain, on all spatial and temporal scales. Uncertainties must be estimated and incorporated or communicated. Not all whishes can be fulfilled on a scientific basis. 13
Summary Normative Open Scientific Honest Swiss Public Applied Routinely User specific Coordinative Sustainable NCCR Climate supported the development of MeteoSwiss and Switzerland towards a modern climate service. 14