NCCR Climate III at MeteoSwiss

As a governmental office one of our role is to provide high quality climate information on the past, current and future conditions to the public, research and decision makers in federal offices, policy and private sector. MeteoSwiss is developing the scientific background to create such an information framework bundling resources from different external funding and a substantial internal contribution.

MeteoSwiss is an active member of the C2SM (Center for Climate Systems Modeling) and participant of various research projects, in particular of the NCCR Climate (Swiss National Center of Competence In Research ? Climate), COST-Actions and projects funded by the European Union. MeteoSwiss coordinates the CH2011 Initiatve, an update of climate scenarios for Switzerland within the framework of C2SM and NCCR Climate.

How will climate change affect Switzerland in the future: Will there be palm trees in Lucerne in 30 years? Will more floods occur and cause damages? Will agriculture profit from the new conditions? Or will everything stay the same?

And what about today’s climate: What precipitation field could cause a catastrophic flood event? Where are favorable wind conditions for alternative energy use? Is a Swiss harvest at danger in the upcoming weeks?

The overarching goal of our research project is to provide high resolution data sets in space and time which will help to answer such questions.