Climex

The main goal of the “Comparative study of changing climate extremes between China and Europe/Greece based on homogenized daily observations” (CLIMEX) project is to assess the impact of climate change induce climate extremes in temperature and precipitation, both in Greece and in China, by using high quality homogenized data. There are three components to the project, the first component being updating the climate data basis and enhancing data availability and accessibility of long-term and high-quality daily temperature and precipitation climate series for China and Greece. The second component is to define the range of climate variability experienced, to examine recent changes of extreme climate and to quantify the impact of climate change on fundamental meteorological parameters, namely air temperature and precipitation. finally, the third component is to deliver a scientific synthesis and visualization of modern climate conditions in Greece using homogeneous and spatially representative climatic data and high-quality metadata. The objectives of this proposal will be achieved through the following actions: a) collecting representative raw daily air temperature and precipitation data and metadata in both countries and subjecting raw climate data to detailed quality control, b) applying state-of-the-art homogenization methods to all available data of surface temperature and precipitation, c) calculating and updating the national climatological normals based on homogenized data series d) applying spatial interpolation techniques, appropriate for meteorological data, on homogenized temperature and precipitation series in order to correlate the meteorological variables with various geospatial (geographic and topographic) factors such as terrain height, coastal effects, orientation etc. and creating continuous surfaces from data points, e) cartographic representation of daily temperature and precipitation using geographical information system (GIS) techniques, f)calculating appropriate climate extreme indices so as to describe the state and the changes in the climate system from the past until now, g) The expected result will be the development of a publicly available (free) gridded climate database for Greece and China. This will allow the trend analysis of temperature and precipitation and their extremes up to present years for the first time in Greece, resulting in findings concerning the climatic change impact in both countries up to now.