DTU Climaite center – Effects of Water

As the climate changes through global warming the precipitation patterns will change and become more extreme leading to significant changes in water supply and water availability. This will in particular become manifest through a combination of a changed precipitation patterns with longer drought periods and more severe rain storms. This will potentially have significant consequences for plant growth and carbon storage. However, there has been relatively little focus on this and our knowledge is still limited. The project aims at improving our knowledge within this area.

The project will take advantage of predictions from global climate models regarding precipitation changes through three activities:

• Downscaling – relating global and regional predictions to consequences for altered precipitation patterns at the local scale.
   
• Effect-assessment – assessment of the impacts of changes in local precipitation patterns on key processes in terrestrial ecosystems (e.g. plant growth, carbon sequestration, water cycle).
   
• Upscaling – relating local changes in plant parameters affected by precipitation patterns at larger scales e.g. through remote sensing.

  
Participants:
The project is a collaboration between Risø DTU (leader) and DTU Environment and DTU Space.

Role:
ECO leads the project.

Resources:
The project is funded by DTU through the DTU Climate Centre.

Duration:
The project is funded to run from 2009 through 2011.  

Employees involved:
Andreas Ibrom and Claus Beier.