SECLI-FIRM

The main objective of the H2020 SECLI-FIRM project, funded by the EU, is to demonstrate that the use of improved climate forecasts, out to several months ahead, can add practical and economic value to decision-making processes and outcomes. The sectors primarily addressed are energy and water. Specifically, for the energy sector the project will assess the impact on operational planning and portfolio management, such as hedging and asset optimization, thus enabling quantification of the value-add provided by seasonal forecasts which have been calibrated, evaluated and tailored for each specific application. A simple but effective methodology will be used to assess the value added. A control case will only utilize climatological conditions based on historical average values – currently the most common approach – while a test case will also consider individually optimised and tailored state-of-the-art probabilistic seasonal forecasts. This will be done for nine case studies for Europe and South America considering recent seasons with anomalous/extreme climate conditions. The case studies will be co-designed by industrial and research partners and will provide the basis for developing pilot climate services for a number of specific applications, allowing evaluation of the added value of near real-time information for decision making.

This project supports the development of innovative methodologies for the forecast of relevant variables (e.g. river discharge).

Eurac will develop innovative downscaling/upscaling procedure to obtain the climate predictand at the time and spatial scales required in the different study cases. Moreover, it will run a study case dedicated to the evaluation of the rainfall/snowfall contribution over the regions of Alps/Apennine and temperatures in extreme weather conditions.

Contact person: Claudia Notarnicola

claudia.notarnicola@eurac.edu