Achievements of Blue-Action
Blue-Action: Arctic Impact on Weather and Climate is a Research and Innovation action.
Start date: 1 December 2016
End date: 30 September 2021
Total EC contribution: 7.5 million Euro
Total costs: 8.2 million Euro
We are all facing a changing climate.
Businesses, policymakers, and local communities need to access reliable weather and climate information to safeguard human health, wellbeing, economic growth, and environmental sustainability.
However, important changes in climate variability and extreme weather events are difficult to pinpoint and account for in existing modelling and forecasting tools. Moreover, many changes in the global climate are linked to the Arctic, where climate change is occurring rapidly, making weather and climate prediction a considerable challenge.
Blue-Action evaluated the impact of Arctic warming on the northern hemisphere and developed new techniques to improve forecast accuracy at sub-seasonal to decadal scales. Blue-Action specifically worked to understand and simulate the linkages between the Arctic and the global climate system, and the Arctic’s role in generating weather patterns associated with hazardous conditions and climatic extremes.
In doing so, Blue-Action aimed to improve the safety and wellbeing of people in the Arctic and across the Northern Hemisphere, reduce the risks associated with Arctic operations and resource exploitation, and support evidence-based decision-making by policymakers worldwide.
What we aimed at in our plan
- Improve the capacity to predict the weather and climate of the Northern Hemisphere, and make it possible to better forecast of extreme weather phenomena
- Improve the capacity to respond to the impact of climatic change on the environment and human activities in the Arctic, both in the short and longer term
- Improve the capacity of climate models to represent Arctic warming and its impact on regional and global atmospheric and oceanic circulation
- Improve the uptake of measurements from satellites by making use of new Earth observation assets.
- Lead to optimised observation systems for various modelling applications
- Contribute to a robust and reliable forecasting framework that can help meteorological and climate services to deliver better predictions, including at sub-seasonal and seasonal time scales
- Improve stakeholders’ capacity to adapt to climate change
- Contribute to better servicing the economic sectors that rely on improved forecasting capacity (e.g. shipping, mining)
- Contribute to the Year of Polar Prediction and IPCC, and to the Copernicus Climate Change Service
- Improve the professional skills and competences for those working and being trained to work within this subject area.
- Improving innovation capacity and the integration of new knowledge
- Strengthening the competitiveness and growth of companies by developing innovations meeting the needs of European and global markets; and, where relevant, by delivering such innovations to the markets.
What we have achieved in 5 years of work
Improved capacity of climate models to represent Arctic warming and its impact on regional and global atmospheric and oceanic circulation
By improving models and projections of arctic sea-ice decline; establishing Arctic-extratropical teleconnections linked to El Nino-Southern Oscillation; by performing coordinated experiment to constrain sea ice; by assessing impacts of sea-ice loss and Arctic Warming; connecting Atlantic meridional overturning circulation impacts of Greenland melting; by delivering a ‘sea change’ in our view of overturning in the subpolar North Atlantic.
Improved capacity to predict the weather and climate of the Northern Hemisphere, and better forecast of extreme weather phenomena
By providing advances in model initialization; research into extremes and atmospheric regimes; skilful cold air outbreaks over land (CAO) predictions; by discovering new ocean pathways to predictions; by assessing impacts of sea-ice loss and Arctic Warming; simulating subpolar freshening from Greenland melting; performing prototype sensitivity prediction experiments.
Improved uptake of measurements from satellites by making use of new Earth observation assets
By optimizing the Transport Mooring Arrays (TMA) by making use of Earth observations; applying methods to constrain the sea ice concentration; using new estimates of Greenland melting assessing subpolar freshening:
Optimised observation systems for various modelling applications
By collecting and publishing new data on the eastern OSNAP (Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program); providing a cost optimization of TMAs; filling parametric data gaps in ocean observing systems.
Provided a robust and reliable forecasting framework that can help meteorological and climate services to deliver better predictions, including at sub-seasonal and seasonal time scales
By developing a new CAO index and casual CAO predictors; developing novel exploitations of large ensembles; developing methods to constrain the sea ice concentration.
Improved stakeholders’ capacity in the area to respond to the impact of climatic change on the environment and human activities in the Arctic, both in the short and longer term and improved stakeholders’ capacity to adapt to climate change
By developing and implementing the prototype of the human heat-health early warning system; developing new climate indicator records; by building scenarios for the Russian Arctic.
Better servicing the economic sectors that rely on improved forecasting capacity
By delivering tailored weather and climate data for Northern Finnish winter tourism centers; by planning and decision support tools for marine operators; developing new Climate Services for Marine Fisheries.
Strengthening the competitiveness and growth of companies by developing innovations meeting the needs of European and global markets; and delivering such innovations to the markets
By launching the Arctic Extreme Weather Risk application for providing projections of seasonal weather risk to marine operations; by prototyping the SnowApp application with useful applications in ski resorts.
Improved innovation capacity and the integration of new knowledge
By pioneering new forecasting capacity in various business sectors.
Improved professional skills and competences for those working and being trained to work within the subject areas covered by the project
By providing targeted, easy-to-understand information about climate change and climate modelling; providing opportunities for stakeholders to interact, co-design and co-develop information and services.
Contribution to the Year of Polar Prediction (YOPP) and IPCC scientific assessments, and to the Copernicus Climate Change (C3S) services
by contributing directly to YOPP and the latest IPCC reports, with the work of authors and co-authors, and feeding into C3S services. 38 publications acknowledging Blue-Action have been cited in the IPCC AR6 report cycle.
