This splinter session will introduce PRIMAVERA, a European Union's Horizon 2020-funded project aimed at exploring the benefits high resolution climate modelling will have for those who use climate information.

Between 1979 and 2012 there were 23 extra-tropical cyclones (windstorms) that affected Europe causing high insurance losses (e.g. over 7 billion EUR from the strongest windstorm in Europe in 1990). These storms will continue to happen in the future. Thus, their occurrence and possible changes under the changing climate need to be assessed with climate models. To date, the resolution of climate models that contributed to the IPCC Assessment Reports has been too coarse to be able to capture the fine details and extreme weather associated with European windstorms.

PRIMAVERA provides state-of-the-art climate model simulations at high resolution (~25km), some of which will contribute to the latest set of climate models which will inform the next IPCC Assessment Report. By better resolving the underlying physical processes, we expect these models to provide better simulations of certain climate processes, such as windstorms, flooding, heatwaves or atmospheric blocking.

PRIMAVERA goes beyond simple information dissemination. It encourages information exchange between decision-makers and project scientists to assure that the project results are useful to and used by stakeholders. So far, the project has been engaging with stakeholders using communication channels such as a specially designed User Interface Platform, factsheets and story maps and involving them through surveys, interviews and meetings.

Now we want to empower stakeholders to use project results in a tailored, one-to-one collaboration and give them the opportunity to feed back into the PRIMAVERA modelling. After a short introduction to the project, the splinter session will open a dialogue where we can review the potential added value provided by high resolution climate modelling, share our experience, acknowledge the challenges and consider together how the PRIMAVERA project could better support European climate risk assessment activities.

Are you interested in extreme weather and climate? Come along if you want to find out more about the project and how climate information based on higher-resolution models could benefit your purpose.