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Workshop: Climate change and weather modelling

The occurrence of severe weather events appears to be more frequent, more widespread and more intense during the last century. One of the results of this phenomenon is that vital systems such as transport, energy and telecom systems are increasingly exposed to disruption or disablement, leading to important societal, economical and environmental risk. In this present-day context, technical and logistic solutions to enhance the security of infrastructure networks under extreme climatological hazards become necessary. The RAIN project aims to develop an operational analysis framework that identifies critical infrastructure components impacted by extreme weather events, with the ultimate objective to minimise those impacts. An important target of the RAIN project is to evaluate the present and future risk to critical infrastructure posed by various extreme weather events.The planned workshop is part of these efforts.

Workshop objectives

The objectives of this workshop on climate change and weather modelling are threefold:

• Identification and analysis of the most probable extreme climatological phenomena affecting Europe infrastructure based on previous events.
• Detailed review of severe weather warning systems in Europe.
• Assessment of the frequency of weather hazards throughout Europe for both the present and future climate. This analysis, which is conducted by means of weather modelling, enables the estimation of the probability of occurrence of these events in the future.

Who should attend?

The workshop will be beneficial for a broad range of critical infrastructure professionals, including engineers (geotechnics, hydraulics, pavements, traffic management), asset managers, climate change adaptation professionals, innovation managers and project managers. Participants might be employed at network owners and operators, contractors and research institutes.

Workshop subjects

• Presentation of the most likely extreme climatological events in Europe, namely heavy rainfall, windstorms, coastal floods, river floods, landslides, lightning, tornadoes, hail, convective windstorms, snowfall and snow storms, icing, snow loading, forest fires and freezing rain, based on extreme events during the past 25 years.
• Description of the natural causes leading to the extreme climatological events, oriented to non-experts on the physical background of the phenomenon.
• A detailed review of severe weather warning systems in Europe.
• Numerical weather prediction models to reliably forecast snow storms, icing, and wildfire risk.
• Predictability of windstorms, heavy precipitation, floods and thunderstorm-related hazards.
• Modelling of severe thunderstorm risk in Europe.
• Assessing the impact of extreme weather events for single mode failures.

 

Workshop date
Mon, 9 November 2015, 10:00 – 17:00

Venue and Transportation
The workshop is organized at Trinity College Dublin (Ireland). Printing House in Trinity College Dublin, Green College, Dublin, Ireland. Click here for directions.

Presenters
The presenters are researchers and consultants from the RAIN project who were involved directly in the climatological hazard study. They will present, discuss and share the results of their findings of climate change and weather modelling.

No fee
This workshop is organized as part of the RAIN project and as such no fee is required to participate. Participants need to take care for transport and hotel accommodations themselves. Sandwiches and drinks will be provided for lunch.

Registration and more information
All presentations and discussions will be in English. For registration and more information please contact William Brazil: rain.project.eu.fp7@gmail.com +353 863 771 513

RAIN project
The output of RAIN will aid decision making in the long term, securing new robust infrastructure development and protection of existing infrastructure against changing climates and increasingly more unpredictable weather patterns.

AGENDA Monday 9 November

Time table	Topic	Speaker
10.00 -10.15	Welcome and Introduction to the course	Alan O’Connor, coordinator of RAIN project (TCD)
10.15 -10.30	An overview of RAIN project	Alan O’Connor, coordinator of RAIN project (TCD)
10.30 -11.00	Weather extremes in Ireland: recent examples and influence of climate change	Ray Mc Grath (Met Eireann – The Irish Meteorological Service)
11.00 -11.30	Changes in severe winter events and forest fire danger in Europe with implication for critical infrastructure	Andrea Vajda (Finnish Meteorological Institute)
11.30 -11.45	Coffee break
11.45 -12.15	Heavy precipitation in Europe	Katrin Nissen (Institut für Meteorologie, FUB)
12.15 -12.45	Extreme river discharges and storm surges in Europe	Dominik Paprotny (Delft University of Technology)
12.45 -13.45	Lunch
13.45 -14.15	A detailed review of severe weather warning systems in Europe	Alois M. Holzer (European Severe Storms Laboratory)
14.15 -14.45	Predictability of European windstorms	Nico Becker (Institut für Meteorologie, FUB)
14.45 -15.15	Modelling severe thunderstorm risk in Europe	Tomas Pucik (European Severe Storms Laboratory)
15.15 -15.30	Coffee break
15.30 -16.00	Assessing the impact of extreme weather events for single mode failures	Donya Hajializadeh (Roughan & O’Donovan Innovative Solutions)
16.00 -17.00	Panel discussion and workshop closure