Climate and Climate change at regional scale is of great importance to ecosystems and the environment. Regional climate can be studied by analysis of data from
weather-station networks, tree ring data and regional scales modeling. Sweden is one of the countries in the would where relatively long time series of reliable
instrumental observations are available, which provides an excellent opportunity for such climate studies. In the last few years, impacts of climate change and
variability on land use, agriculture and forest productivity, air quality and water resources have been become new research fields for the group due to the
activities brought about by the new members. Much of these efforts have been carried out in and for China, which also resulted in researches on climate
variability and changes in China.
Main research fields
The key areas of research are: 1) examination of spatial patterns of recent climate changes and variability in Sweden and China by using instrumental and
proxy data such as tree ring data and its association with other factors in the global climate system; 2) study of local climate with a focus on
urban scale and its impacts on environment in for example the Gothenburg and Shanghai regions; 3)
Impact studies related to climate change. The principle objectives are:
- to use existing homogenized series of instrumental climatological records and proxy data to characterize spatial patterns of regional climate change and variability;
- to relate the spatial and temporal patterns to changes in the global climate system (e.g. NAO, Siberian High, SST) and surface characteristics;
- to examine changes in the spatial structure and frequency of occurrence of a suite of major large scale atmospheric circulation patterns determined from observations and models to investigate the relationship between large-scale climates and the regional patterns of climate.
- to better understand regional climates by combining instrumental and proxy data with climate model simulations.
- to reveal and project impacts of climate on ecosystem and society.
Significance
Our research can be divided into regional climate researches and impact studies driven by climate change. The first is aimed at helping to resolve critical issues related to regional climate, climate change and variability, involving both data from standard meteorological stations and outputs of GCMs and other regional scale models. The second group is of applied nature and often carried out in and for developing countries such as India.
An understanding of the spatially averaged GCM products and the finer scale regional variability derived from surface data and other models would be useful for several reasons. Firstly it would help focus on the dominant spatial scales involved in the interannual variability of the regional climates. Studies such as this can help validate the performance of GCMs for the Swedish region and also provide regional climate scenarios based on large-scale climate projections, e.g. the regional climate changes likely to result from an enhanced greenhouse effect. This is of great importance for prediction of regional energy consumption, forest production, and agriculture. The second part has applications in society planning, mitigation of climate change and sustainable development of society.
Ongoing research projects 
The Greater Baltic Area Paleoclimate Database (BALPAL)
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Background: A new climate database is under construction at the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Gothenburg: The Greater Baltic Area Paleoclimate Database.
Hans Linderholm, professor of physical geography and his team will together create a database to share their data sets with other researchers. It is hoped that other researchers
will also contribute their data, and so the project can build a comprehensive, high-quality database with data from paleoclimate ressearch throughout northwestern Europe.
Knowledge about past climate conditions has the potential to provide a deeper understanding of today's climate, both in terms of natural climate variability and human impact on climate.
Funding: The project is funded by Vetenskapsrådet (the Swedish Research Council, VR), 2009-2010.
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Effect of Intensive Forestry on greenhouse emissions from Swedish forests
Background: Swedish forests act as large carbon sinks. But what will happen in the future if forest managers start applying nitrogen fertilizers to grow biofuel? Nitrous oxide (N2O) is 296 times more potent as a green house gas than carbon dioxide, and it stays in the atmosphere for 120 years. Tellus scientists from the University of Gothenburg are participating in a new research project that aims to find out.
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According to IPCC, anthropogenic N2O emission should be reduced by 50%. But very little is known about NO and N2O emissions from fertilised young forests, so firstly this needs to be studied more thoroughly. The project will then investigate net emissions resulting from different forestry fertilization strategies. This means looking not only at sequestration (in trees, soil, and wood products), but also carbon emissions from forest operations, avoided emissions due to wood product substitution of fossil fuels and non-wood products, and of course the emission of non-carbon GHGs like N2O. The overall aim i a holistic overview of how intensive forestry can contribute to a positive climate effect through decreased net GHG emission in Sweden.
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Methods: The project will use the CoupModel to simulate how forests grow - and their greenhouse emissions - depending on the soil, the available nutrients, and the climate. Because the project will take a long-term view, looking at emissions over the next 100 years, this means the simulations must incorporate climate change. The Regional Climate Group at the University of Gothenburg are contributing downscaled climate change scenarios that can be used for the simulations.
Participants: The project is a joint collaboration between SLU (Johan Bergh), Mid Sweden University (Leif Gustavsson) and Gothenburg University (Leif Klemedtsson). The climate modelling will be linked to the GU Tellus platform, and is begin conducted by David Rayner under the supervision of Prof. D. Chen, and done in co-operation with the Rossby centre.
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IRWIN - Improved local road winter index to assess maintenance needs and adaptation costs in climate change scenarios
Background: Roads become slippery and dangerous when temperatures are close to zero, and salting is a winter maintenance activity that can help. Should road owners expect to perform more salting under climate change conditions? What about snow ploughing - climate change scenarios show more winter precipitation in Sweden. A new project involving the Regional Climate Group at the University of Gothenburg is investigating.
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Improved tools for road owners are urgently needed to help them cope with rapidly progressing climate change. Scenarios with good spatial and temporal resolution that show the climate we might expect in the future, especially regarding severe weather events, are a very important tool for planning activities. Traditionally, downscaled climate change scenarios are calculated using ordinary meteorological data. But meteorological station data is not the most appropriate data for describing road climate conditions.
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Methods: The idea of IRWIN is to combine the best climate change scenarios from Global Climate Models (GCMs) with data from field stations from the Road Weather Information systems (RWIS) used by many countries. These stations are located along important road networks, and provide accurate information about road climate. The goal of IRWIN is to use this new dataset to develop an improved winter road index which can be used to assess the costs and benefits of various winter maintenance strategies.
Participants: The IRWIN project participants and their representatives are Foreca Consulting Ltd, Finland (Pirkko Saarikivi), Klimator AB, Sweden (Torbjörn Gustavsson) and Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden (Dave Rayner).
Funding: IRWIN is funded as a joint research project through "ERA-NET ROAD - Coordination and Implementation of Road Research in Europe", a Coordination Action funded by the 6th Framework Programme of the EC.
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An assessment of afforestation in Egyptian deserts - the ecological effects on tree species of irrigating artificial forests with treated wastewater
Funding: Swedish Research Links, 2009-2011
More details coming soon.
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Multi-proxy reconstruction of precipitation extremes and its relationship with forest fire activity in southern and central Fennoscandia since AD 1500
Funding: Formas, 2007-2010.
More details coming soon.
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- Tellus - Research Platform for Tellurology at Göteborg University. Go to Tellus homepage (2007- )
- Past and future extreme climates in relation to atmospheric circulation over Europe: The role played by anthropogenic forcing, supported by the Swedish Research Council (VR), (2006-2008)
- Forecasting of groundwater and pore pressure in soft sediments which enable accounting for climatic changes, together with SGU, CTH and SMHI. Supported by Formas.(2006-2008)
- Modelling Climate Effects on Global-Scale Water Balance, together with Uppsala University and Oslo University from Formas. (2006-2008)
- Extreme rainfall events in Sweden and their importance for local planning, supported by Swedish Rescue Services Agency (SRSA) (2005-2007) (project homepage)
- Weather regimes in a changing climate: how does it affect soil erosion in Loess Plateau of China? Supported by STINT (The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education) (2003-2007).
- Evaluating climate variability and its ecological impacts in the past 300 years using tree-ring and historical data from Shaanxi Province, China. Supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) (2004–2007).
- Spatial and temporal patterns of regional climate variability in Fennoscandia during the past 500 years – A dendroclimatological approach. Supported by the Swedish Research Council (VR) (2004-2008).
Ongoing Ph.D. projects
- Past and future extreme climates in relation to atmospheric circulation over Europe: The role played by anthropogenic forcing
- Forest based CDM projects in India - an analysis of the prospects for establishment of forest based CDM projects in southern India (project website)
- Modelling of Southern-Asian Tropospheric Aerosols, supported by Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) and SMHI
- Impact of climate variability and change on agriculture and forest production in northern and western China, supported by Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) and National Climate Center/CMA in China
- Transportation and Air Quality in Mega-city, Shanghai, China, supported by GU through GMV and IVL.
- Modelling the Impact of Climate Change on Ecosystem in the Tibetan Plateau, supported by CMA and STINT
- Climate change and its impact on water resources in China
Finished research projects (1999- )
- Agriculture, Forest and Water Management to Minimize Negative Effects of Climate Change. Risk Scenarios and Adaptation Strategies., together with KTH, SLU, LU, UU supported by Swedish Environment Protection Agency (link) (2006)
- Modeling and statistical downscaling of daily climate variables in Sweden and China, supported by Swedish Science Council (VR) and National Climate Center/CMA in China (2003-2005).
- Development of Optical Remote Sensing Instruments for Volcanological Applications (DORSIVA), Supported by EUs FP5 (2002-2005).
- European and North Atlantic daily to MULtidecadal climATE variability (EMULATE), Coordinated by Prof. Phil Jones and supported by EUs FP5 (2002-2005).
- Development of statistical and dynamical downscaling methods for climate change studies in China,
supported by Chinese Academy of Sciences (2002-2004).
- Development of Sub-grid Trace-gas Deposition Methodologies for Large Scale Models: Application to Sweden, supported by Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and Formas. (2001-2004)
- Climate change impact studies in China
This is a multidisciplinary research project focusing on impact studies on climate change and variability on local-scale land use Shaanxi Province, China (2002-2003)
- The FlyKlim research project
The full titel for this project is "Aircraft induced change of high clouds and its impact for the regional climate in Sweden". (2001-2003)
- Urban heat island development in Beijing in the context of climate change,
supported by Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) and National Climate Center/CMA in China (2003).
- Statistical downscaling of regional climate change scenarios for Sweden
Participating in the MISTRA-supported program SWECLIM (SWEdish regional CLImate Modelling) under the Rossby Center and the tasks for us are: 1) to study the regional climate variability in Sweden through the instrumental observations and 2) to develop statistical downscaling model for creating future regional climate scenarios for Sweden from climate model simulations. Link to SWECLIM on the MISTRA homepgae (in Swedish). (1996-2003)
- NAO and the Swedish Climate Variability
The project investigate the varying impact of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on Swedish climate. Supported by NFR (Swedish Natural Science Research Council) (1999-2000).
- Research information
This project is developed in spirit of the Swedish Universities "third task" which is spreading information to the public outside the universities. This project is about spreading information of climate research directed towards the high school and college. Founding has been received from FRN (The Swedish Council for Planning and Co-ordination of Research) (1999).
- Is it possible to make skilful seasonal prediction of regional climate anomaly in Sweden?
supported by STINT (The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education) (2001-2002).
Ongoing Research Projects