ITALY PROJECT FOR C3S NCP – Copernicus Climate Change Service National Collaboration Programme
The objective of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) National Collaboration Programme (NCP) is to support Countries in developing capacity to enhance uptake of C3S core products and services, in response to specific national needs, with the goal to improve climate resilience. The NCP will support the capacity of authorities to deliver user-oriented climate services, support adaptation plans and promote climate change communication and public awareness.
The main objectives of the Italian proposal for C3S NCP are the consolidation and improvement of the use of C3S products into operational workflows of national hydro-climate services, to be deployed, at the national and sub-national scale, to support actions and measures to adapt to climate change and to assess risks, and/or to increase climate resilience and sustainable uses of natural resources.
The workflows considered are based on existing national/local operating systems and model suites, and they can rely on several national and local operating information systems and websites for the free exploitation and dissemination of the results. This guarantees the maintenance of C3S data-based products after the ending of the C3S NCP.
This project explores the uptake of C3S products to cover the so-called “last-mile” delivering high-quality, robust, scientific-sounding, and high-resolution hydro-climate information across the country to primarily support institutional activities, as well as potential private users from, for instance, energy, water, agrometeorological, hydroelectric & insurance sectors.
The project plans to consider four types of C3S products:GHG data, climate reanalyses, seasonal forecasts and climate projections, downscaled and tailored to the Italian territory, to derive products and indicators to support the seamless evaluation of water resources, heat waves and wildfires, in continuity with the operational assessments mainly based on in-situ observations and satellite data.
The Italian team consists of ISPRA, the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, which is the prime Contractor leading the team, Aeronautica Militare with the Meteorological Service, representing Italy in the ECMWF Council, Agenzia ItaliaMeteo, the national Meteorological Civil Service, ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, the Consorzio Italiano per la Copernicus Academy, two Institutes of CNR, the Italian National Research Council, and the four Regional Environmental Protection Agency (ARPA) of Campania, Piedmont, Lombardia, and Aosta Valley. ARPAs will support the testing of the C3S-derived products at the local scale. Hence, each of them will act as “local tester” and “user testimonial”.
Agenzia ItaliaMeteo will perform a calibration of seasonal forecasts of near-surface temperature and precipitation based on quantile mapping of daily data. Furthermore, Agenzia ItaliaMeteo will perform a deep analysis of the new methodologies for downscaling climate projections based on statistical approaches, partially already applied at local scale, as well as algorithms based on machine learning.