RAPID - Round 2 - The impact of climate change on the North Atlantic and European storm-track and blocking Project

Introduction

The major impact of climate change in the European region is likely to be through changes in the storms coming through from the North Atlantic storm-track and in the blocking high-pressure systems that can occur there. Changes in the latitude, frequency or intensity of storms would have implications in terms of flooding and wind damage as well as average precipitation. Blocking highs bring settled spells with little precipitation and temperatures that can be much above average in summer and below average in winter, sometimes with snow. Again changes in their position, frequency or intensity would have important impacts. Reduction in the strength of the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic could induce rapid climate change through its impact on the storm-track and blocking. Even smoothly increasing greenhouse gases could lead to rapid changes in the storm-track and blocking either through a reduced thermohaline circulation or a non-linear response. At present there is little confidence in the climate models' abilities to project such changes. In this project, new high-resolution atmospheric models, new analyses of the atmosphere since 1958 and new diagnostic techniques will be used to give such projections and an assessment of the confidence that can be had in them.

Project Duration: 14 Mar 2005 - 13 Mar 2008

This project is funded by NERC - Grant Ref. NE/C509115/1 - through the RAPID Climate Change NERC directed mode programme.

Access to data and information

Data and software supplied from this project to the BADC will be stored in the BADC RAPID archive.

Access to the archive is currently restricted to participants to this particular project. If you are a programme participant and would like to access this RAPID project data, then please apply for access^* to the RAPID data.

You will be requested to abide by the RAPID Climate Change Data Policy.
Data management, availability and use are ruled by the RAPID Climate Change Programme Data Management Plan (PDF document).
Access to Hadley Centre model data held at the BADC is subject to the signature of the NERC-Met Office agreement.

^* Note that to apply for access to this dataset, you should first register as a BADC user (anyone is allowed to register). If you are already a registered BADC user, skip this step. If you have forgotten your BADC user ID and/or password, please contact the BADC helpdesk at badc@rl.ac.uk. To register as a new BADC user, please follow the instructions online.

Citation

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Who to contact

This RAPID project is led by Prof Sir Brian Hoskins of Imperial College London, Grantham Institute for Climate Change, with co-investigators also at the University of Reading.

General queries about these pages or browsing the data should be directed to the BADC Support line

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