Belmont Forum and JPI Climate: launching of an international call on climate services
In a context of globalisation, the variability of the polar and tropical systems affects a large part of the world's population. Extremes such as sub-seasonal breaks of monsoon rains up to decadal trends in rainfall intensity have a strong impact on water resources for agriculture, industry and water supply. In turn, global monsoon systems in Asia, Africa and Latin America also affect climate extremes in mid- and high-latitudes. Similarly, variability of polar vortexes plays a significant role on weather in mid-latitudes, and even on monsoon systems. Society as a whole can thus benefit from the development of capabilities to predict climatic phenomena such as monsoons or floods, and the usability of knowledge of the climate.
The recent notion of climate services covers all the information and services that can be used to evaluate and qualify the past, present or future climate, to determine the vulnerability of economic activities, of the environment and of society as a whole in the face of climate change, and to provide elements to undertake mitigation and adaptation measures. Climate services thus provide local and regional users, in the near future, with data that are sufficiently relevant and as reliable as possible.
Promoting collaborative and international research on the role of inter-regional links in climate variability and predictability
This joint call for proposals between the Belmont Forum and the JPI Climate aims to contribute to the overall challenge of developing climate services with a focus on the role of inter-regional linkages in climate variability and predictability.
A particular focus of interest is the drivers and mechanisms linking Poles & Monsoons for societal usefulness of climate services. Major impediments to having efficient climate services at regional and local level do still exist, because of little or poorly understood climate processes (in part caused by the scarcity of observations), inadequate dissemination of scientific knowledge, conflicts between climatic and non-climatic stressors and lack of action by decision makers and human society at large.
Projects should address one or more of the following topics:
- Understanding past and current variability and trends of regional extremes
- Predictability and prediction skills for near‐future variability and trends of regional extremes
- Co‐construction of near term forecast products with users
Twelve countries are participating in this call: Austria, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Norway, Qatar, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
The project consortia must comprise at least three partners from three different countries participating in the call, with at least one of these partners being from a non-European country. Teams from countries that are not participating in the call may also take part in the projects but must ensure their own funding. The consortia shall preferably rally different scientific disciplines in order to provide an optimised response to the themes mentioned above. Collaborative projects are hoped for, demonstrating the added valued of the international collaboration
Each agency will fund its own country's teams in accordance with its specific conditions. ANR will thus only fund the French teams. The overall projected budget for the call is 15 million euros.
The submission process will involve two stages, with closure of submission of pre-proposals on 1st June 2015. The detailed proposals must be submitted before mid-November 2015. Project selection shall be an integrated international peer evaluation process involving all the countries. The funded projects will be able to begin in spring 2016.
Find out more:
| Belmont Forum and JPI Climate, the research funding agencies focus on the climate |
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The Joint Programming Initiative "Connecting Climate Knowledge for Europe" (JPI Climate) was set up in 2012 to enable European countries to coordinate their action concerning the new challenges generated by climate change. The Joint Programming Initiatives (JPI) constitute a mode of cooperation between member States working to build the European Research Area. The JPIs aim to optimise national research efforts and to network the actors in order to respond as effectively as possible to the major societal challenges facing European communities. JPI Climate seeks to facilitate integrated climate knowledge and decision support services for societal innovation towards a climate-friendly and climate-proof Europe. It provides a platform for aligning national research priorities, for coordinating research in Europe and for responding to the needs of the European society through innovative and transdisciplinary international approaches and flexible collaborative governance.
The Belmont Forum is an international group of major and emerging agencies funding research on global environmental changes. It aims at speeding up the transmission of environmental research in order to eliminate obstacles to sustainability by harmonising and mobilising international resources. The Belmont Forum launches calls for proposals intended to add value to existing national investments and to support interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary scientific projects proposed by international consortia.
