AWI Climate Storylines
Climate change is not just an abstract, complex change of weather statistics. Climate change is present in the weather of every single day – and it is not the same each day!
Consider a summer day somewhere in Europe with an Atlantic ocean breeze, and compare it to a day influenced by winds blowing from the continent. The latter will tend to be more strongly affected by climate change, simply because the continents warm more strongly than the oceans.
Can we be more specific? Yes! By using a climate model in a special way, where the winds are forced to follow the observed winds, we simulate the 'climate change signal of the day'. Every day and everywhere. Just a few days behind real-time. And with this tool, you can have a look and explore our storyline simulations yourself.
Our results have limitations and are not perfect. We use just one climate model, and other models will give somewhat different results. Our model is coarse, using grid boxes as wide as 100km, so a lot of detail is lost. And finally, this storyline method only extracts the 'thermodynamical' component of climate change, meaning that it necessarily ignores possible (but mostly rather uncertain) changes of wind patterns.
For these reasons, we consider our storyline simulation system a prototype. The approach has already proven to be a powerful tool for climate research, as showcased in a recent publication in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment. By making climate change very tangible, we envision climate storylines like ours to become an important piece of the future dissemination portfolio of climate change information.
Publication: Athanase, M., Sánchez-Benítez, A., Monfort, E., Jung, T., and Goessling, H. F. How climate change intensified storm Boris’ extreme rainfall, revealed by near-real-time storylines. Commun Earth Environ 5, 676 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01847-0
The data from the prototype storyline simulation system used here and its post-processing and visualization must be considered experimental. While the data provides evidence about the role of climate change based on scientific methods described in the peer-review literature (see references below), the results are not suited for definitive statements and the authors do not assume liability for their correctness.
The data visualized in this webtool stems from storyline simulations of the AWI Climate Model (version 1).
Usually, every climate model simulation produces its own quasi-random realization of weather patterns. In contrast, here the large-scale atmospheric winds are forced to reproduce the observed evolution by a technique called spectral nudging. The imposed winds stem from the ERA5 reanalysis. All other variables, such as temperature, humidity, clouds, rain, soil moisture, sea ice concentration and other ocean properties are simulated by the climate model as usual.
Atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations, aerosols, and land-surface properties correspond to the pre-industrial climate, the present-day climate with a global-mean warming of about 1.2°C, and a hypothetical future climate with a global-mean warming of about 4°C.
The simulations were started (that is, the state variables were initialized) from states corresponding to those different climates as simulated by the free-running model. These simulations provide an answer to the question: „If the same large-scale weather (circulation) patterns would unfold in a world without climate change - or in a world even warmer than today -, how would near-surface temperatures, rainfall, etc. change?“ This new approach towards climate attribution and projection has the potential to make climate change very tangible, in particular when applied to significant extreme events.
The depicted nudged simulations were started in January 2017 and updated daily until the Near-Real-Time (NRT) – that is, a few days before real-time.
Details on the methodology and an example case for the summer 2019 European heatwave can be found in this publication: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/35/8/JCLI-D-21-0573.1.xml.
An animation of the summer 2019 European heatwave storylines, rendered by Michael Böttinger at the German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ), can be found online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzr5kWRytZY.
An example case for the summer 2019 Northeast Pacific marine heatwave can be found in this publication: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01212-1.
Questions can be directed to Helge Goessling (helge.goessling@awi.de), Marylou Athanase (marylou.athanase@awi.de) and Antonio Sánchez-Benítez (antonio.sanchez.benitez@awi.de).
Developer of the webtool: Eva Monfort (eva.monfort@awi.de), with technical support by Stefan Pinkernell (AWI).
The development and maintenance of this webtool has been carried out at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany (AWI). This work was supported by funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Helmholtz Research Field Earth & Environment for the Innovation Pool Project SCENIC. This work used resources of the Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum (DKRZ) granted by its Scientific Steering Committee (WLA) under project IDs ba1264 and bk1099.
Content generated by the AWI climate storylines webtool (screenshots or generated images) may be copied, reproduced, and distributed, under the condition that the Alfred Wegener Institute is acknowledged and the URL of the website (https://climate-storylines.awi.de) is provided, both visibly. If content is used in scientific publications, blogs, or news articles, please also cite the publication describing the approach and webtool:
Athanase, M., Sánchez-Benítez, A., Monfort, E., Jung, T., and Goessling, H. F. How climate change intensified storm Boris’ extreme rainfall, revealed by near-real-time storylines. Commun Earth Environ 5, 676 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01847-0
Please choose the parameters for the plot.
Abbreviations:
PI: Pre-industrial climate conditions
PD: Present-day climate conditions (global warming of about 1.2°C)
4K: Climate conditions under 4°C global warming
Dataset:
Climate Conditions:
Time Period:
Variable:
Region:
Latitude (in °N):
Longitude (in °E):
Colorbar Settings:
Please choose the parameters for the plot.
Abbreviations:
PI: Pre-industrial climate conditions
PD: Present-day climate conditions (global warming of about 1.2°C)
4K: Climate conditions under 4°C global warming
Dataset:
Time Period:
Variable:
Region:
Latitude (in °N):
Longitude (in °E):
Colorbar Settings:
Anomalies are determined by substracting ERA5 and AWICM1 climatologies for the 1985-2014 reference period from ERA5 and storyline simulations, respectively.
Please choose the parameters for the plot.
Abbreviations:
PI: Pre-industrial climate conditions
PD: Present-day climate conditions (global warming of about 1.2°C)
4K: Climate conditions under 4°C global warming
Dataset:
Climate Conditions:
Time Period:
Variable:
Region:
Latitude (in °N):
Longitude (in °E):
Colorbar Settings:
Please choose the parameters for the plot.
Abbreviations:
PI: Pre-industrial climate conditions
PD: Present-day climate conditions (global warming of about 1.2°C)
4K: Climate conditions under 4°C global warming
Time Period:
Variable:
Region:
Latitude (in °N):
Longitude (in °E):
Storyline Simulations:
Climate Reanalysis:
Climatologies:
Reference period 1985-2014
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No liability is assumed for completeness, editorial and technical errors, topicality, omissions, etc. or the accuracy of the content, unless the author can be proven to have acted with intent or gross negligence.
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This statement was prepared on 23.09.2021 and updated for this site on 05.04.2024.
The technical review of accessibility was carried out by: Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research.
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This website contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) information [2024], namely post-processed data from the climate reanalysis ERA5 (Hersbach et al. 2020) with updates retrieved daily from the C3S Climate Data Store (CDS) (Hersbach et al. 2017). The CDS distributes ERA5 data openly, without specific usage restrictions, provided that users give clear and visible attribution to the Copernicus program (see Licence to use Copernicus Products for details). Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use that may be made of the Copernicus information or data it contains.
Hersbach, H., Bell, B., Berrisford, P., Hirahara, S., Horányi, A., Muñoz‐Sabater, J., Nicolas, J., Peubey, C., Radu, R., Schepers, D., Simmons, A., Soci, C., Abdalla, S., Abellan, X., Balsamo, G., Bechtold, P., Biavati, G., Bidlot, J., Bonavita, M., De Chiara, G., Dahlgren, P., Dee, D., Diamantakis, M., Dragani, R., Flemming, J., Forbes, R., Fuentes, M., Geer, A., Haimberger, L., Healy, S., Hogan, R.J., Hólm, E., Janisková, M., Keeley, S., Laloyaux, P., Lopez, P., Lupu, C., Radnoti, G., de Rosnay, P., Rozum, I., Vamborg, F., Villaume, S., Thépaut, J-N. (2017): Complete ERA5 from 1940: Fifth generation of ECMWF atmospheric reanalyses of the global climate. Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Data Store (CDS). DOI: 10.24381/cds.143582cf