High impact climate events: Better adaptation through earlier prediction

The prediction of high impact climate phenomena can be substantially improved by a new mathematical approach that analyses the connectivity and patterns between geographical locations, scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research say in an new publication. This can potentially save thousands of lives and avoid billions in economic losses. Prediction times for events like El Niño, monsoons, droughts or extreme rainfall could be increased substantially, to a month or in some cases even a year in advance, depending on the type of the event. The new framework can thus become key for improving adaptation to the global warming crisis.

Portrait von Niklas Boers, innerhalb eines Gebäudes. — Portrait of Prof. Niklas Boers. Image: Uli Benz / TUM

Niklas Boers researches in Earth System Modelling at the TUM School of Engineering and Design and one of the authors of the article:

"The power of network-based foreasting approaches also lies in their generality, making them applicable for different kinds of climate phenomena, from El Niño events to the prediction of both extreme rainfall or droughts: For example, six out of the seven most severe Amazon droughts can be predicted using a network encoding the dependencies between the tropical Atlantic ocean and the Amazon."

Article
Josef Ludescher, Maria Martin, Niklas Boers, Armin Bunde, Catrin Ciemer, Jingfang Fan, Shlomo Havlin, Marlene Kretschmer, Jürgen Kurths, Jakob Runge, Veronika Stolbova, Elena Surovyatkina, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (2021): Network-based forecasting of climate phenomena. PNAS [DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1922872118]

Weblinks
High impact climate events: Better adaptation through earlier prediction - PIK

Network-based forecasting of climate phenomena - PNAS

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