Climate analogues
We work on climate analogues, which is a methodology that matches the current climate of a region with the future climate of other locations [1]. It is a powerful tool to characterise the climate shift of regions and is useful for raising awareness about the pace, magnitude and dynamics of climate change. Our research aims to improve the relevance of the climate analogue determination and apply it across various sectors, including agriculture, to develop an accessible tool that facilitates adaptation to the challenges of a changing climate in the future.
We also developed a mobile app to visualize climate analogues of European cities, for different time ranges in the future, and depending on the climate parameters under consideration.
Climate change spatial velocity (MATCH)
Generalizing the climate analogue approach to each location of a wide area, typically at the regional or global scale, allows to define a “velocity of climate change” [2]. While current approaches in this direction yield to unwanted instabilities, we developed an alternative method for computing the spatial velocity of climate change: MATCH (Monte-CArlo iTerative Convergence metHod) [3]. It generates smooth velocity fields and is therefore more relevant for tracking the shift in distribution ranges of species due to climate change [4]. Future developments include the simultaneous consideration of multiple climatic parameters in the MATCH method, aiming to better characterise the spatial velocity of climate change in relation to specific case studies like the migration of species or the shift in the regions favorable to specific crops.
REFERENCES
[1] Rohat G., Goyette S., Flacke J., Characterization of European cities' climate shift - an exploratory study based on climate analogues. International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management 10, 428 (2018) - ()
[2] Loarie S. R., Duffy P. B., Hamilton H., Asner G. P., Field C. B., Ackerly D. D., The velocity of climate change. Nature 462, 1052 (2009) - ()
[3] Gaponenko I., Rohat G., Goyette S, Paruch P., Kasparian J., Smooth velocity fields for tracking climate change. Scientific Reports 12, 2997 (2022) - ()
[4] Moinat et al., under review