The TRACCS (TRAnsforming Climate Modelling for Climate Services) programme has secured a funding of 51 M€ for the next 8 years from France 2030. It aims to transform climate modelling to meet current challenges and societal expectations by improving knowledge and tools concerning climate impacts and risks, and contributing to the development of climate services.
The activities envisaged are of several kinds: 1) modelling of relevant processes to simulate the climate from the global to the local scale in order to provide reliable climate data for assessing both mitigation scenarios and local adaptation actions and their feedback effects on the climate; 2) adapting computer codes to new computing architectures, to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the exascale in order to increase spatial resolution, better represent the complexity of the climate system, and explore large simulation sets; 3) the use of advanced statistical methods and artificial intelligence to characterise climate extremes, accelerate models, and develop emulators (fast statistical models) to better quantify uncertainties; 4) estimating the impacts of climate change on different sectors of activity and different territories to co-construct adaptation; 5) the development of a dialogue between scientists and stakeholders, teaching and communication with all audiences in order to co-construct prototypes of climate services in a transdisciplinary and multi-sectoral approach. This approach, accompanied by the training of a new generation of experts in climate change and its impacts, will transform the way in which scientific advances on climate change are shared with stakeholders, thus increasing the capacity for adaptation and mitigation on a sound scientific basis, thus contributing to the major international and European guidelines.
The programme involves several leading organisations and institutions in this field in targeted and priority projects, and through calls for proposals will extend the participation of all relevant national scientific research to the objectives of the programme.