Research and development services and related consultancy services

Tender description

ECMWF as the Entrusted Entity for the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) has issued and/or will issue ITTs for providing access to climate projections at global and regional level, developing multi-model products focussed on projected values of Essential Climate Variables (ECVs), assessing the potential benefit of improving specific aspects in the production of climate projections (e.g. with respect to the standards specified in international inter-comparison projects), and filling recognized gaps in the production of regional projections. A common goal across the C3S activities is a comprehensive assessment of the projection uncertainties, with reliable estimations of the roles played by different emission scenarios, global and regional model formulation, and internal climate variability. This ITT is dedicated to the provision and assessment of regional projections produced with regional climate models (RCMs) for different emission scenarios (using an appropriate set of GCM lateral boundary forcings), to be developed as a part of the Service. Two lots will be tendered, the first one concerned with providing technical solutions to access data from existing RCM simulations and boundary conditions with future experiments, the second one supporting a new and well-coordinated set of simulations for the European domain and its scientific exploitation. A common goal across the C3S activities is a comprehensive assessment of the projection uncertainties, with estimations of the roles played by different emission scenarios, global and regional model formulation, and internal climate variability. In the initial stages, C3S activities will be mainly based on simulations already available, and produced under the CORDEX subprojects covering the European domain and adjacent regions (particularly EURO-CORDEX and MED-CORDEX). Specific requirements on the RCM simulations to be provided are set in the ITT, with the goal of assessing the capability of individual models in simulating relevant aspects of the climate system, and allowing the production of probabilistic, multi-model projections with reliable estimates of uncertainties. At the same time, actions will be promoted to provide support to a new generation of RCM simulations which are expected to contribute to the next IPCC Assessment Report. Such actions include the storage and access of lateral and lower boundary conditions derived from global simulations through the C3S Climate Data Store (CDS), and support towards the definition and production of an appropriate matrix of RCM-GCM-scenario combinations. Framework agreements of up to 48 months will be issued in 2 Lots: — Lot 1: Access to CORDEX simulations for the European domain. — Lot 2: Definition and generation of a ‘3-D matrix’ of RCM projections.