No. 73 September, 2017 CLIVAR Exchanges Special Issue on climate over the Iberian Peninsula: an overview of CLIVAR-Spain coordinated science NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC (Source: NASA’s Earth Observatory) CLIVAR Ocean and Climate: Variability, Predictability and Change is the World Climate Research Programme’s core project on the Ocean-Atmosphere System Progress in Detection and Projection of Climate Change in Spain since the 2010 CLIVAR-Spain regional climate change assessment report Enrique Sánchez1, Belén Rodríguez-Fonseca2, Ileana Bladé3, Manola Brunet4, Roland Aznar5, Isabel Cacho6, María Jesús Casado7, Luis Gimeno8, Jose Manuel Gutiérrez9, Gabriel Jordá10, Alicia Lavín11, Jose Antonio López7, Jordi Salat12, Blas Valero13 1 Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Biochemistry, University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), Toledo, Spain 2 Dept. Of Geophysics and Meteorology, Geosciences Institute UCM-CSIC, University Complutense of Madrid, Spain 3 Dept. Applied Physics, Faculty of Physics, University of Barcelona (UB), Barcelona, Spain 4 Centre for Climate Change, Department of Geography, University Rovira i Virgili (URV), Tarragona, Spain 5 Puertos del Estado, Madrid, Spain 6 GRC Geociències Marines, Dept Earth and Ocean Dynamics, University of Barcelona (UB), Barcelona, Spain 7 Agencia Estatal de Meteorología (AEMET), Spain 8 Environmental Physics Laboratory, University of Vigo (UVIGO), Vigo, Spain 9 Meteorology Group. Instituto de Física de Cantabria (CSIC-UC), Santander, Spain 10 IMEDEA, University of Balearic Islands (UIB), Palma de Mallorca, Spain 11 Instituto Español de Oceanografía (IEO), Centro Oceanográfico Santander, Spain 12 Institute of Marine Sciences, CSIC, Barcelona, Spain 13 Pyrenean Institute of Ecology (IPE-CSIC), Zaragoza, Spain Introduction The Iberian Peninsula region offers a challenging prolonged dry periods, heatwaves, heavy convective benchmark for climate variability studies for several reasons. It exhibits a wide variety of climatic regimes, these factors make comprehensive understanding and ranging from wet Atlantic climates with annual modellingprecipitation of andIberian floods climate are recurrentparticularly features. challenging. All precipitation around 2000 mm, to extensive semi- arid regions with severe hydrological stress, to even Like the rest of the Mediterranean region, and as cold alpine environments in some isolated areas. This stated in the last IPCC report (WG1AR5, Chapter 14, climatic diversity results from its latitudinal location Christensen et al., 2013) the Iberian Peninsula is at the northern edge of the subtropics, its complex projected to be severely affected by large temperature topography punctuated by several important mountain increase and precipitation reduction, particularly in chains, its peninsular nature, and the presence of two summer, and very likely more frequent heat waves. surrounding very different water masses: the Atlantic The prospect of strong negative impacts in an already Ocean and the Mediterranean sea. The climate variety vulnerable region emphasizes the need for thorough assessments of the current climate to better interpret energy and water budgets and related exchanges with theis reflected atmosphere. in large Additionally, heterogeneities extreme in the events land-surface such as climate projections, and increase our confidence in them. CLIVAR Exchanges No. 73, September 2017 1 Climate science developed slower in Spain if compared on climate change detection and projections over Spain to some other European countries, but currently a large community of national researchers is involved in assessing es2015.urv.cat), with the support of various research the role of various processes, such as topography, natural since the findings of the IPCC AR5” (http://www.clima modes of variability, teleconnections from the tropics, air- (AEMET). The main goal of the symposium was to serve sea and land-sea interactions, in shaping those diverse asinstitutions, a starting including point for the an Spanish updated Meteorological assessment report. office regional climates and understanding how these may Subsequently, however, owing to lack of institutional change under global warming. This task is aided by the funding, it was thought that a more viable option — and existence of relatively long meteorological time-series hopefully a more effective one — would be to present the and a dense network of stations — although regrettably not all data are publicly available to investigators. Exchanges. results of the symposium via a special issue in CLIVAR Because many of the studies undertaken by the presented at the Tortosa meeting. Each article deals withThe following one of ninethe articlestopics ofsummarize the symposium, the main findingsnamely: scientistsSpanish climate was created community about 15fit yearsin well ago with with the the main goal paleoclimate, climate time series, gridded datasets, ofscientific coordinating objectives climate of the science CLIVAR in Spain,project, and a network increasing of atmospheric trends, teleconnections, oceanic variability, its international visibility. Roberta Boscolo at the time regional model assessment, regional atmospheric climate projections and oceanic projections (with was instrumental in promoting this effort. This led to projections for the Mediterranean and Atlantic treated working for the International CLIVAR Project Office, committee (www.clivar.es), that includes representatives report but the emphasis is on updated results, advances the creation of the current CLIVAR-SPAIN scientific inseparately). understanding, The structure and new resembles developments that orof researchthe first (meteorologists, atmospheric physicists, oceanographers foci. The aim of this publication is to highlight the broad andfrom paleoall the scientists). different fieldsThe committee, related to withCLIVAR very science little scope of ongoing national research focused on Spanish support from the national government, also strives to climate. For this reason, special attention has been paid serve as a reference for the Spanish climate science to include as many research groups as possible, hoping community, a contact point with society and policy- scientists who specialize on particular topics. program. that this issue may be used as a basis for finding Spanish makers, and a liaison with the international CLIVAR Although the continued growth of Spanish climate science is evident, with an increasing number of contributions the organization of two national workshops in 2005 and to international journals and individual participation 2009,The first both tangible of which achievements were followed of thisby the committee publication were of in international projects and IPCC reports — a non- two assessment reports (available in English in the above negligible feat in times of economic crisis and drastic science budget cuts —, we hope this special issue will also serve to demonstrate the capacity of the Spanish climate webpage). While the first one, entitled “State of the art science community to work together in a coordinated provideof the Spanish an overview contribution of Spanish to research the Climate groups Variability involved effort. At the same time, we recognise that this special and Predictability (CLIVAR) study”, was intended to issue only partially describes national achievements of Spain: past, present and future. Regional climate change recent years. in climate science, the second one, entitled “Climate in regional climate assessment report, to which more We thank all the researchers that have contributed assessment report” was a comprehensive peer-reviewed directly or indirectly to this issue, hoping that it will coordinated effort to involve the entire Spanish climate help to increase their international visibility and create than a hundred researchers contributed. It was the first awareness and recognition of their work. We also want available nationally and internationally, as evidence of to express our gratitude to all former members of the thecommunity vitality and into relevance a scientific of Spanish endeavour climate to science. be made We were proud to be able to present this report orally at the enthusiasm, paved the road and taught us that initiatives suchCLIVAR-SPAIN as these committeeare possible who, even with without their exampleinstitutional and Paris (2011), and at the WCRP Open Science Conference support. held18th thesession same of year the in CLIVAR Denver Scientific via a cluster Steering of posters. Group in After the publication of the last IPCC report in 2013, the from each article. What follows is a brief summary of the main findings 1: Paleoclimate mind,CLIVAR-SPAIN a symposium committee was held decided in Tortosa that an in update 2015 entitled of that The available marine and terrestrial climate first regional assessment report was timely. With that in reconstructions in the Iberian Peninsula for the last 2,000 “International Symposium CLIMATE-ES 2015: Progress CLIVAR Exchanges No. 73, September 2017 2 years show the evidence of a complex spatial and temporal evolution for precipitation and temperature, and seasonal variability in precipitation trends have with a pronounced spatial variability. beenhumidity found, has it maybeen be identified. in relation Although to changes strong in the spatial global teleconnections. Average annual precipitation over Spain This replicates somehow the current climate variability in the Iberian