News

The International Project Office for CORDEX would like to thank the CORDEX community for all the valuable work during 2024 and also wish all of you:
Happy Holidays!

The CORDEX office will be unmanned during the period of 21 December to 1 January.
For urgent matters regarding CORDEX data access please have a look at our website under Data access and/or our FAQ
For other CORDEX matters please take a look at the general FAQ or contact one of our Points of Contact (POCs) or one of our Science Advisory Team (SAT) members.
For more WCRP-related matters you can turn to the WCRP secretariat

From 12-13 November, 2024, the Global Change and Sustainability Center (CCGS) in Villahermosa, Tabasco, hosted the II Workshop on Dynamical and Statistical Downscaling: Hydrological Applications in Mexico and Canada. The workshop brought together ten participants from esteemed institutions in Mexico and Canada, representing a gender distribution of three women and seven men.

Exploring the Climate-Hydrology Nexus

The event provided a platform to discuss state-of-the-art methods in climate modeling and their applications in hydrology. Key highlights included:

1. Climate Models and Their Importance for Mexico

Dr. Mercedes Andrade Velázquez explored the role of climate models in distinguishing natural climate variability from anthropogenic impacts. She emphasized statistical downscaling as an essential tool for enhancing the resolution of global climate models at local scales.

2. Pseudo Global Warming Methodology

Dr. José Antonio Salinas Prieto presented a case study using the Pseudo Global Warming (PGW) approach to analyze the energy dynamics of tropical cyclones and atmospheric disturbances.

3. Hydrological Modeling in Mexico and Quebec

Dr. Annie Poulin and Dr. Romero delved into uncertainty analysis in hydrological projections, aiming to improve flood risk assessments under climate change scenarios.

4. Evaluation of CMIP5 and CMIP6 Models

PhD student Alejandro Ordoñez Sánchez compared CMIP5 and CMIP6 climate models, highlighting advancements in the latter for accurately reproducing precipitation cycles in southeastern Mexico.

5. Innovative Tools and Techniques

Dr. Martín José Montero Martínez introduced Climate4R, a flexible, open-source tool for statistical downscaling, while Sergio Rodríguez Torres showcased neural network-based downscaling for northwest Mexico.

Collaborative Outlook and Capacity Building

The workshop underscored the importance of collaboration and capacity building, as participants conducted a SWOT analysis of the project. Key strengths included robust computing infrastructure, skilled personnel, and interdisciplinary expertise. Identified opportunities include integrating atmospheric sciences into academic programs and leveraging cloud platforms for collaboration.

The event concluded with a roadmap for delivering integrated climate-hydrology outputs by 2025. Participants highlighted the need to strengthen dynamical downscaling expertise and secure additional resources for continued project development.

Acknowledgments

The workshop was made possible through funding from CORDEX and the dedication of the organizing team at CCGS. Special thanks were extended to Dr. Andrade and Dr. Salinas for their leadership and contributions to the project.

Stay tuned for the next steps as this collaborative effort continues to drive advancements in climate modeling for hydrological applications in Mexico and beyond.

As of September, José Manuel Gutiérrez has been appointed as the new third co-chair for the CORDEX Science Advisory Team (SAT). José Manuel Gutiérrez is from the Institute of Physics of Cantabria a joint research center of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) and the University of Cantabria, Santander, Spain and has been a SAT member since 2019.
During the work with restructuring CORDEX it has been decided to enlarge the SAT and to have three co-chairs instead of two. José Manuel Gutiérrez will co-chair SAT together with the other two co-chairs, Silvina Solman and Daniela Jacob.

José Manuel Gutiérrez

In addition, new SAT members have been appointed to start in 2025 bringing new scientific and regional expertise. We would like to warmly welcome Dong-Hyun Cha, Erika Coppola, Faye Abigail Cruz, Ulrich Jacques Diasso, Alessandro Dosio, Jesús Fernández, Marcus Thatcher and Sabin TP as new members of the Science Advisory Team.

We would also like to thank the four SAT members stepping down at the end of 2024, Grigory Nikulin, Sanjay Jayanarayanan, Fredolin Tangang and John Cassano. Thank you all for your excellent contribution during the years!

Im Eun-Soon, Melissa Bukovsky and Csaba Torma invite abstracts to the regional climate modeling session at next year’s EGU General Assembly, 27 April – 2 May 2025 in Vienna.

CL5.4/Regional Climate Modeling, Including CORDEX

This session welcomes papers on methodological developments in regional climate modeling, performance analysis of RCMs, use of RCMs for regional processes studies, past and future climate projections as well as studies on extreme events and impact assessment. Additionally, the session encourages submissions related to the CORDEX program, including the analysis of CORDEX-CORE experiments and simulations within the framework of different CORDEX Flagship Pilot Studies. This year, in celebration of the past 15 years of CORDEX, we also welcome abstracts synthesizing domain specific achievements, progress, and challenges. We anticipate that this session will provide a platform for discussing the progress of RCM-related research and fostering future collaborations.

The abstract submission deadline is 15 January 2025, 13:00 CET. The General Assembly is being run as a hybrid conference, so you may still present in the session if you are not able to attend in person.

At the AGU24 in Washington D.C. 9-13 December there are several CORDEX related presentations. Please find below some of the presentations. More can be found if searching for CORDEX in the online programme.

In the session Regional Climate: Modeling, Analysis, and Impacts convened by Melissa Bukovsky, Ruby Leung, Rachel McCrary, Paul Ullrich, and Eli Dennis there are many presentations using CORDEX data or on CORDEX modeling efforts:

• A Global Climate Model Performance Assessment for the North America CORDEX Domain Based on Regional Atmospheric Circulation Types – by Swen Brands et al.
• Improved historical and future simulation of wind speed and cloud cover with NA-CORDEX over northeastern North America – by James King et al.
• Assessing the impact of adaptation strategies on crop yields in the context of climate change in West Africa – by Amadou Coulibaly et al.
• Precipitation Driven Sediment Load Changes – The Role of Model Ensembles in Determining the Results (A Case Study from the Polish Carpathians) – by Agnieszka Wypych et al.
• The Selection of Driving Models for Regional Simulations: What if Some Marriages Were Less Happy than Others? – by Dominique Paquin et al.

The session is  held: Talks: 10 December 2024, 8:30-10:00 and Posters: 9 December 2024, 13:40-17:30

Additionally, two CORDEX talks:

• Advancements and Insights from NA-CORDEX: Over a Decade of North American Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling (by Melissa Bukovsky)
• NA-CORDEX-CMIP6: Current Overview and Updates in North American Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling (by Rachel McCrary)

can be found in the session Climate Downscaling and Weather Postprocessing: Development, Evaluation, and Applications
Conveners: Mimi Abel, Dan Feldman, Ethan Gutmann, Jeff Arnold
Posters: 9 December 2024, 13:40-17:30
Talks: 10 December 2024, 14:10-15:40

Dominique Paquin together with Martin Leduc, Émilie Bresson, Pierre Pellerin, Travis Logan and Louis-Philippe Caron have a poster titled: Navigating the world of climate services: how to optimally combine the joint use of regional and global simulations in the session Drowning in Data: Guiding Climate Data Users Through the Next Generation of Climate Big Data
Posters: 10 December 2024; 13:40 – 17:30

The Polar CORDEX community held another great meeting this year, and this time in Potsdam! There was a good mix of presentations on the latest scientific and modelling advances in the Arctic and Antarctic.
A highlight from this year’s meeting was the development of an ensemble of RCM downscalings of two CMIP6 models over the Arctic CORDEX and Antarctic CORDEX domains. Initial results on model performance shows great potential for the ensemble and it is expected that there will be more exciting results from this ensemble at next year’s meeting. Work is now underway to publish the data on ESGF nodes. Other highlights from our meeting include progress on existing model intercomparison studies and plans for future studies.
It was announced at this year’s meeting that Annette Rinke (AWI) will be resigning from her role as coordinator of Polar CORDEX. Annette has been a coordinator of Polar CORDEX since its inception in 2013. She and her fellow coordinators, John Cassano (CU Boulder) and Andrew Orr (UKRI-BAS), have built a vibrant and strong Polar CORDEX community. The community is very grateful to Annette for her tireless work coordinating and leading our downscaling activities. At the meeting, we were also delighted to announce that Priscilla A. Mooney (NORCE, Bjerknes Centre) will join the coordination team and we look forward to continuing the success of Polar CORDEX with the new coordination team.
Many thanks to all our participants for sharing their excellent work and knowledge with the community, and a very special thanks to Annette Rinke and her colleagues at AWI for hosting us.