Renewable energy is central to the global effort to move to less carbon-intensive economies that support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, the generation of renewable energy and its operational planning are strongly affected by weather and climate variability, which causes wide variations in both energy supply and demand. To better deal with climate variability, international efforts are directed to enhance the quality, quantity and application of climate services in support of decision-making by renewable energy producers.

The limited uptake of climate predictions by the renewable energy sector identifies the need for enhanced communication of their usefulness. Case studies – events that users identify as relevant because they affected their businesses in the past – offer a suitable way to communicate and share knowledge with potential users. Case studies can help showcase how climate information and knowledge would have been useful if available at the moment of the event and also illustrate how to translate probabilistic model outcomes into deterministic decision-making. 

Some efforts to co-develop case studies for the energy sector are led by European H2020 projects such as S2S4E (Sub-seasonal to seasonal climate predictions for energy), APPLICATE (Advancing polar predictions in the Arctic and beyond) and PRIMAVERA (High resolution climate change projections carried out with a new generation of climate models). Examples of how case studies are used to analyse past periods with unusual climate behaviour affecting the energy market  will be presented during this webinar, including three different project perspectives and expertise.

Moderator:

Isadora Christel Jiménez, Earth Sciences Department, Barcelona Supercomputing Center

Speakers:

Karla Hernández, Project Manager at Nnergix Energy Management (S2S4E project) 

Marta Terrado, Science Communication Specialist at Earth Sciences Department, Barcelona Supercomputing Center (APPLICATE project)

Dragana Bojovic, Social Scientist at Earth Sciences Department, Barcelona Supercomputing Center (PRIMAVERA project)

Agenda

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The financial sector is aware of the potential impact of climate change on their products and customers. For example, risk profiles of their products may change due to changes in extreme rainfall, storms, flooding, etc. At the same time the sector’s climate data needs are diverse, with insurance companies, lenders, and asset managers and owners having varying climate data and information needs.

In this webinar, we have invited speakers from the financial, advisory and research sectors to share how parts of the financial services sector are managing climate risks, and ways that financial services firms can interact and engage with climate change research:

• Rabobank: Bouke de Vries, Lead Rabobank Climate Program
• EU-MACS project: Robin Hamaker-Taylor, financial services consultant, Acclimatise
• Climinvest project: Sophie de Jonckheere, Cicero, project manager Climinvest

After the presentations there will be ample time for discussion to share experiences among the participants.

This webinar is the first webinar in a series, organised by SINCERE and ClimateEurope. SINCERE is a European initiative that aims to strengthen international climate change research and innovation collaboration by webinars and other outreach.

The speakers

Bouke de Vries is Advisor to the Board on Public Affairs and leads Rabobank’s Climate program. Currently he also chairs the Green and Sustainable Finance Working Group of the European Association of Cooperative Banks in Brussels

Robin Hamaker-Taylor is a financial services specialist with Acclimatise, an adaptation and resilience advisory firm. Robin manages Acclimatise’s engagements with global financial institutions and corporates, supporting them to assess physical climate risks and opportunities. In the EU-MACS-project she investigated climate data and information needs of the finance sector, including commercial banks, investors, rating agencies, and reinsurers.

Sophie Dejonckheere is a Senior Advisor in Climate Finance at CICERO where she leads the ClimINVEST project that focuses on bringing transparency to physical climate risk assessments and writes second opinions for green bond frameworks.

Climate change and its potential impact are difficult to communicate: it seems far away in time and space and the influence a single person has seems nihil. Besides, alarmistic messages tend to paralyze instead of resulting in actions. So how could we improve a safe landing of the climate change message to policymakers and decision makers, so they can base their decisions on the right information? Making use of visualizations can be highly effective. However, a wrong use of visualization, such as using again and again a starving polar bear, can be counterproductive. In this webinar 2 experts will show examples on the use of visualization in short presentations (each 15 min.) and we will discuss do’s and don’ts in visualization of climate information, good examples of visualization, etc.

Speakers:

• Bernadet Overbeek, advisor weather and climate of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) will give examples of visualization of climate information in the Netherlands: among others examples of regional translations of the Dutch climate scenarios visualized with graphs and maps, an example of ‘Future Weather’, an event with extreme precipitation translated to a 2 degrees warmer climate and the use of storylines with users of climate information that tell their personal story with illustrations.

• Isadora Jimenez, communication specialist at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, will give examples of visualizations of climate information for climate services. She works especially on climate services related to solar and wind energy and on climate services for the agricultural sector and the water management sector. She will also present the development of a portal in the Copernicus Climate Change Service for journalists in search for images and data to build their climate change stories.

Interaction with users has become important for the development of climate services and for the dissemination of results of many projects on climate change and climate adaptation. Besides face-to-face meetings there is also a lot of attention for user interface platforms (UIPs). However, almost all projects develop their own website for this. During this webinar 2 speakers tell what was the idea behind the set-up of their UIP, what were the challenges and whether they have the idea that they reached the users well. After the presentations we will discuss what we can learn from experiences form different projects on the interaction with users via these UIPs.

Speakers

• Juan José Sáenz de la Torre: works as science communicator at Predictia Intelligent Data Solutions. For the PRIMAVERA-project, Predictia helped design and implement a User Interface Platform (uip.primavera-h2020.eu/) where a large range of results from the project are shown.
• Hasse Goosen: is director of Climate Adaptation Services (CAS). CAS developed the Dutch website on spatial adaptation (www.ruimtelijkeadaptatie.nl), which gives an overview of a large range of activities and tools for climate adaptation among others the Dutch Climate Impact Atlas. He was also involved in, among others, the development of the C3S Sectoral Information System on water SWICCA.

Climate Thursdays webinar series on climate innovation and climate services is organised under the umbrella of the Climateurope webstival 

This webinar is hosted by CLARA (www.clara-project.eu) and CLARITY (www.clarity-h2020.eu) projects under the umbrella of the CLIMATEUROPE (www.climateurope.eu) (funded by the European Commission under the EU Horizon 2020 (Grant Agreement CLARA 730482, Clarity 730355, Climateurope 689029)

Ex-ante impact assessment of the new EU Adaptation Strategy (external event organised by DG CLIMA) 

• webinar on the ex-ante impact assessment of the new EU Adaptation Strategy providing an overview of the impact assessment and interim results, followed by a discussion with a panel of experts.
• more info: https://ee.ricardo.com/climate-change/impact-assessment-for-the-new-eu-adaptation-strategy
• register https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/5346133793676572940

Climate Thursdays webinar series on climate innovation and climate services is organised under the umbrella of the Climateurope webstival 

This webinar is hosted by CLARA (www.clara-project.eu) and CLARITY (www.clarity-h2020.eu) projects under the umbrella of the CLIMATEUROPE (www.climateurope.eu) (funded by the European Commission under the EU Horizon 2020 (Grant Agreement CLARA 730482, Clarity 730355, Climateurope 689029)

Climate Thursdays webinar series on climate innovation and climate services is organised under the umbrella of the Climateurope webstival 

This webinar is hosted by CLARA (www.clara-project.eu) and CLARITY (www.clarity-h2020.eu) projects under the umbrella of the CLIMATEUROPE (www.climateurope.eu) (funded by the European Commission under the EU Horizon 2020 (Grant Agreement CLARA 730482, Clarity 730355, Climateurope 689029)

Speakers:
Filip Lefebre, VITO Climate services
Carmela Apreda, CMCC Foundation, REMHI Division

Moderator: Paola Mercogliano, CMCC Foundation, Director REMHI Division

Abstract

Filip Lefebre will present the activities of the VITO Urban Climate Service Center that is specialized in the delivery of data, tools and services to support urban areas in their ambition to become more climate resilient with a particular focus on heat related issues. The presentation will include a description of the UrbClim urban climate model and how the model results are used for multi-sectoral urban adaptation activities. Tangible results will be shown from the H2020 Climate-fit.city project, the C3S European Health project as well as from contract work for administrations and other stakeholders from different policy levels.

Carmela Apreda will present the results of the research activity conducted by CMCC REMHI Division within the URBAN-PRO Strategic Project. The study aims to investigate the effects of urban morphology on the urban microclimate by analysing the characteristics and performance of typical Euro-Mediterranean housing blocks. The presentation will include the main findings of the study which highlight a close relationship between density, geometry and air temperature distribution.

The analysis of these key factors represents an important tool for the improvement of urban design measures: by taking into account quantitative climate data in urban planning, architecture and environmental design, it supports both local authorities and practitioners to build resilient cities in a changing climate.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE
The webinar will be broadcasted via Go-to-Webinar.
Please, click on the following link for registration:
https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/2318642831767146767

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

This webinar is hosted by the H2020 CLARA (Climate forecasts enabled knowledge services, www.clara-project.eu) in collaboration with the Climateurope (www.climateurope.eu/) and CLARITY projects (www.clarity-h2020.eu)

The webinar is dedicated to show the use of climate services for decision and policy making in innovation regions. The webinar focuses on innovative climate services for heat alerting, crop classification and irrigation, coastal protection and others.

Panelists:

• Patrizia Bianconi, Emilia Romagna Regional Administration
• Stefano Bagli, Gecosistema srl
• Vittorio Marletto, Sandro Nanni, Alessandro Pirola, ARPAE- Regional Agency for Prevention, Environment and Energy of Emilia-Romagna, Italy
• Chiara Benaglia Land Reclamation and irrigation Board Romagna

Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_FCfY1xCFQjWejJ7k80qaxw
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Cities are key players when it comes to climate change. They not only contribute to climate change, they are also affected by the expected impacts. Many of the activities in research projects focus on large cities, as the concentration of people and infrastructures, but also the economic value creation is higher here. Even though, small and medium-sized municipalities are equally affected by climate change with very specific associated challenges, they are not as much in the research focus as larger cities and metropolitan areas. Some of the challenges are the financial and structural conditions, or the availability of human resources. All of these issues make it a real challenge to integrate climate change adaptation into the everyday work of local decision-makers in politics and administration. Consequently, solutions that can be successful in larger cities are not always transferable to small and medium-sized municipalities.
This webinar aims to provide a forum to discuss these challenges of climate change adaptation and possible solutions for small and medium-sized municipalities. We will learn about the specific challenges in the introductory talk of a representative of a medium-sized municipality. This presentation is followed by a second talk showcasing some of the solutions that have been co-developed and tested in the LIFE LOCAL ADAPT project. The final talk will provide insights in how multiplier organisations support adaptation processes in small to medium sized municipalities and help transfer research outputs in practical implementation. After this there will be ample time for questions and discussion.

Speakers
1. Jana Putnina: representative of the municipality of Valka / Latvia
2. Majana Heidenreich: representative of the LIFE LOCAL ADAPT project (TU Dresden)
3. Vaselios Latinos: representative of the Convenant of Mayors (ICLEI)