Download PRECIS – The Hadley Centre Regional Climate Modelling system

PRECIS – The Hadley Centre Regional Climate Modelling system:
dissemination
What is PRECIS?
PRECIS stands for “Providing REgional Climates for Impact Studies”. PRECIS is a regional climate
modelling system developed at the Hadley Centre that can run on a PC and can be applied easily to
any area of the globe to generate detailed climate change predictions.
Why develop a flexible Regional Climate Model?
Regional Climate Models (RCM) provide climate information with useful local detail including realistic
extreme events. Developing countries are the most vulnerable to climate change. Hence the need for
detailed climate change scenarios to assess their national vulnerability. The development of a PC
version of the Hadley Centre’s RCM is addressing this need by allowing developing countries to
generate their own national scenarios of climate change for use in impact studies. This will lead to
technology transfer and capacity building within developing countries.
Who funds PRECIS?
The UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) funds the development of the
Hadley Centre’s RCM and specific collaborations focused on its use over India, southern Africa and
China.
The UK Department for International Development (DFID) funds the PC version of the Hadley Centre’s
RCM.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) funds support for training materials relevant to
PRECIS for experts in developing countries.
What is the strategy for disseminating PRECIS?
PRECIS will be provided to institutions after attending a training course on the usage of PRECIS.
This training course will explain not only the uses and advantages of the model, but also its limitations.
Users will be encouraged to use PRECIS as one of a number of tools for the development of
scenarios. The priority of the training course is to build capacity on the use of PRECIS in order to
facilitate the development of assessments of national vulnerability to climate change. These are
required by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) together with
the submission of National Communications discussing these vulnerabilities and how they are
planning to adapt.
How will training on PRECIS be delivered?
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1
Training for groups of users in developing countries : PRECIS will be first released to experts from
developing countries generally through their National Met Services and associated institutes
responsible for providing assessments of vulnerability to climate change. Several institutions have
already shown an interested in acquiring PRECIS; hence the aim is to provide for those
institutions first, given that the required funding is found to deliver the training course. These
courses will generally be given in one of the countries in the region where PRECIS will be used.
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A developing country is any country not included in Annex I to the UNFCCC (as amended in 1998), or any
country included in Annex I that has an economy in transition. A developed country is any country which is not a
developing country.
PRECIS – Dissemination
April 2003
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Training for users in developed countries: PRECIS is being distributed on a non-profit basis;
however, users from developed countries will be expected to contribute towards the costs of the
development of PRECIS and provision of training. Contributions will form the basis of a trust fund
that will be set up by the Met Office Hadley Centre, which will in turn be used to support PRECIS
training courses being run for developing countries (including the payment of Hadley Centre
costs). Training courses being provided to users in developed countries would generally be held
at the Met Office and might be adapted to the expertise of the user.
How will PRECIS be supplied?
PRECIS will be supplied on two DVD-ROMs. These DVD-ROMs will include:
• Executables and source of the PRECIS RCM and control code;
• Three years of data for RCM boundary conditions;
• Software to set up, control and monitor the PRECIS RCM;
• Software to automatically archive data produced by PRECIS;
• Software to process the generated data, e.g. to form multi-annual means, time-series, etc;
• Software to display the processed data;
• Software tools that can be used to extract data e.g. for use by impact models.
What kind of support and follow-up will be provided?
Support will consist of a Web site and mailing list maintained at the Hadley Centre. This online support
will provide:
• Details of the current status of PRECIS
• Helpdesk (providing hints and answering queries)
• Updates and modifications to the model
• Forum for the exchange of data and methods among users
• Data for model validation
In addition, members of the PRECIS team would generally be available to participate in workshops
organised by developing country projects using PRECIS.
How will the boundary conditions for PRECIS be supplied?
The boundary conditions and other Hadley Centre fields required to drive PRECIS will be supplied on
tape or hard disk. Requests for these data will be made through the PRECIS web site. In order to
reduce costs, Hadley Centre boundary condition data will be supplied for a limited area of the earth's
surface. Boundary condition data will in general only be supplied for areas which encompass the
geographical position of a user's institution; this is to promote the use of PRECIS by developing
country institutions. For experts from developing countries and countries with economies in transition
these driving fields will be freely available. Other users will be expected to cover relevant costs.
What are the requirements of a PC running PRECIS?
The PC should have a fast processor (speeds in excess of 2 GHz allow 10 year simulations to be
completed in as little as one month), 512Mb of memory, 60 Gb of disk space and a tape drive to allow
off-line storage of input and output data. The PC must run the Linux operating system.
Are there any terms and conditions for the use of PRECIS?
Users will be asked to sign and return the PRECIS Licence Agreement.
Ruth Taylor
Met Office Hadley Centre London Road Bracknell Berkshire RG12 2SY United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1344 856885 Fax: +44 (0)1344 854898
Email: [email protected] http://www.metoffice.com/research/hadleycentre/models/PRECIS.html
PRECIS – Dissemination
April 2003