Termonia, P. ; Van Schaeybroeck, B. ; De Cruz, L. ; De Troch, R. ; Caluwaerts, S. ; Giot, O. ; Hamdi, R. ; Vannitsem, S. ; Willems, P. ; Tabari, H. ; Van Uytven, E. ; Hosseinzadehtalaei, P. ; Van Lipzig, N. ; Wouters, H. ; Vanden Broucke, S. ; van Ypersele, J.-P. ; Marbaix, P. ; Villanueva-Birriel, C. ; Fettweis, X. ; Wyard, C. ; Scholzen, C. ; Doutreloup, S. ; De Ridder, K. ; Gobin, A. ; Lauwaet, D. ; Stavrakou, T. ; Bauwens, M. ; Müller, J.-F. ; Luyten, P. ; Ponsar, S. ; Van den Eynde, D. ; Pottiaux, E.

published in Climate Services (2018)

Abstract: CORDEX.be is an initiative to bring together the Belgian climate and impact modeling research into one network as the first step towards the realization of climate services. It is based on the international CORDEX (“COordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment”) project but the “.be” indicates it goes beyond for Belgium. The key to the foundation of national climate services is a combination of the existing expertise on high-resolution downscaling, local-impact models, ensemble dynamical and statistical downscaling, combined with links to international initiatives and stakeholder dialogue. This allows to address the propagation of climate change and uncertainty from global to the local scale combined with a better representation of climate extremes. The climate network structure of CORDEX.be is naturally directed by a top-down data flow, from the four participating upper-air Regional Climate Modeling groups towards seven Local Impact Models. However, the CORDEX.be framework and guidelines are based on a user-oriented bottom-up approach. The aims are to contribute to the international climate community by participating in the EURO-CORDEX project, to create a small ensemble of High-Resolution (H-Res) future projections over Belgium at convection-permitting resolutions, and, to couple these to seven local-impact. All results will then be gathered, incorporating bias correction and statistical downscaling for uncertainty estimation. Lastly, based on interactions and feedback with stakeholders, dierent applications are planned that demonstrate the use of the climate data. The CORDEX.be framework provides the first building block for a research network which could be extended, both nationally and internationally, with the objective of providing climate services.

Keyword(s): Regional Downscaling, Climate impact modeling, Statistical Downscaling, Dynamical Downscaling, Local Impact Models, Climate Change, EURO-CORDEX, Uncertainty estimation, Regional Climate Model, Climate, Belgium, Water vapour observations
DOI: 10.1016/j.cliser.2018.05.001