Various research projects at Austrian research institutions deal with the development and improvement of climate scenarios and the evaluation and adaptation of global and regional climate models. The minimization of uncertainties in both global and regional climate models is part of many research strategies. Some of these projects run within the framework of national and international interdisciplinary consortia, funded by the ACRP – Austrian Climate Research Program of the Climate and Energy Fund.
In the next generation of Austrian climate scenarios, special emphasis is placed on the topography of Austria and the corresponding challenges of climate models in mountainous regions. The new data should also be more usable for urban areas.
The aim of Klimaszenarien.AT is to synthesize these project results and to generate climate scenarios for the years 2026+ that are as user-oriented as well as scientifically sound. In this way, the communication and application of project results and data should also be promoted beyond the project period in order to be able to better answer specific questions from different user groups.
The main goal of the ACRP project PREVAL ÖKS NEXTGEN is to steer the development of the new Austrian Climate Scenarios (ÖKS 26), in particular to ensure a process that (1) takes into account a broad set of user needs and values, (2) informs about the selection of model ensembles and individual models, and (3) informs about the bias adjustment and statistical downscaling strategy in place.
The ACRP project HighResMountains combines various emerging and high-resolution climate data with the overarching goal of understanding extreme events over the complex Alpine region and their changes as the atmosphere warms further.
The ACRP project Use.AT aims to systematically collect findings from the development, use and dissemination of ÖKS15 and related products as well as from comparable international approaches for climate services (CS) in order to develop the new climate scenarios for Austria (ÖKS26) in line with requirements , to be prepared in a target group-oriented manner and thus to improve their usability.