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Home > Research > EUROCLIM

European Climate Change Monitoring and Prediction System

EUROCLIM is a project I started whilst at SPRI and have continued as the representative for DAMTP even though I am now at SAMS. The project is part of the EC 5th Framework "Information, Society, Technology Programme". The main goal of the project is to develop an advanced climate monitoring and prediction system for Europe, which will contribute to Europe’s ability to reduce possible man-made climate changes and to take the necessary measures to limit the consequences of climate change to human lives and the society in general.

The project partners aim to develop and validate an advanced system for climate monitoring and prediction for the support of a sustainable development and protection of the environment in Europe. The system will focus on global warming and the consequences thereof. The European cryosphere (the Euro-Arctic region and high-mountain areas with seasonal snow, including Greenland) will be the focus of the main indicator system. Snow and ice variables are extracted and processed by advanced sensor technology and algorithms and applied in regional climate models and statistical models in order to predict changes and run scenario analyses. Project partners with national operational responsibilities have committed themselves with assistance from the industrial partners in the consortium to make EuroClim an operational long-term monitoring system if the prototype system is a technical and cost-effective success.

My work in this project is to process the historical archive of passive microwave satellite sensor data to derive sea ice paraemeters. Passive microwave sensors on satellites have a data archive going back to 1972. They are useful in determining sea ice extent as the sensors are capable of detecting sea ice and open water even in the darkness of polar nights and through cloud cover. Some examples of products shwoing sea ice extent are shown in these pages. I ahve also carried out some work to determine sea ice type with the aim of producing some estimation of thickness.

You can also visit the official project web pages at the Norwegian Computing Centre (Norsk Regnesentral).