Impacts of climate change and weather extremes in Europe: building a knowledge base for decision support

The ClimXtreme program, funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research, focuses on the assessment of the frequency and intensity of historical extreme events and their impacts in Central Europe, their association with dynamical and thermodynamical processes and how these extreme events might change according to enhanced anthropogenic climate forcing. The program currently aims at the development of a basis for stakeholder decision making that consists of data, software, and information tailored to their needs. By means of dedicated hazard specific stakeholder interaction groups, relevant stakeholders and researchers will develop the knowledge base through a two-way process. Social scientists will explore and develop the communication process with stakeholders. Within the research program, a post-event assessment group will be formed aiming at rapid response of the project to extreme events occurring during project runtime. The group will make use of the developed knowledge base, apply pre-defined methods and workflows to assess current extreme events with diverse perspectives which are represented in ClimXtreme. Both the concept and selected recent results of the ClimXtreme program will be highlighted.