Work Package 3

"Frontier applications": Attribution of extremes to land processes and their mitigation through land geoengineering

Projects 5 and 6 will focus on frontier modelling applications. The main modelling tools will be the regional ESM COSMO-CLM2 and – at the global scale – the NCAR and MPI Earth System Models. The PhD projects will benefit from the model developments undertaken in WP2 and will receive technical support from the model developer. They will address the following scientific questions:

• Assessment of role of land-climate interactions for recent drought and heatwaves, as well as trends in these events with implications for climate change attribution (Project 5)
• Testing and assessment of land-geoengineering options to mitigate the effects of droughts and heatwaves on both regional and global scale using improved modelling systems (Project 6)

These topics constitute leading-edge research applications, which are moreover important contributions to climate change adaptation and mitigation through public communication (attribution) and the reduction of impacts of unavoidable climate change (land geoengineering). The activities in projects 5 and 6 will benefit from existing collaborations with several institutions.