As we progress to a climate-neutral society, compliance with Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) regulation is an increasing challenge for many business sectors across Europe.
The meteorological community has a vital role in this activity. Organisations seeking compliance with the emerging regulatory framework require high-quality data and analyses to enable the assessment of corporate risks associated with a wide range of weather and climate-related factors.
Some key elements are:
• Climate change: quantification of future effects: heat, drought, flood, wildfire etc...
• Impact assessment: what can be done for determining effects on businesses?
• Regulations: what must be done?
A Keynote speaker will provide an overview of the ESG landscape and this will be followed by Presentations and Posters from both Private and Public sector organisations that address the needs of the business community.
Contributions may cover a wide range of topics, such as:
• Policy Frameworks and Governance
• Data Sharing and Integration
• Technology and Innovation
• Capacity Building and Education
• Case Studies of Successful Collaborations
This continues the long-running series of EMS sessions jointly convened jointly by the Public and Private sectors in the Global Weather Enterprise, as represented by:
PRIMET: the Professional Trade Association for meteorological service providers operating in the private sector.
EUMETNET: a network of 33 European National Meteorological Services based in Brussels, Belgium. It exists to provide a framework to organise co-operative programmes between the members in fields of meteorology, data processing and forecasting product.
The escalating challenges posed by climate change necessitate the advancement of meteorological services to enhance early warning systems and climate research. This presentation showcases a groundbreaking initiative undertaken by Meteopress in collaboration with Metservice New Zealand and the Tongan Met service, aimed at deploying a state-of-the-art, sustainable weather radar in Tonga. This project epitomizes the synergy between public, private, and academic sectors in leveraging technology for climate resilience and compliance with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) regulations.
The newly installed radar system is pivotal for the Tongan Met service, offering enhanced capabilities for early warning and accurate weather forecasting. Unlike conventional systems, this radar does not merely supply processed data; it also provides open access to raw data for researchers, thereby fostering scientific investigation and innovation. The radar's construction embraces open-source principles, with software written in Python and C, which facilitates ongoing development, upgrades, and scientific exploration.
This initiative aligns with the session's theme of Public-Academic-Private Collaboration to Support Climate Neutrality Goals by showcasing a successful model of collaboration that merges technological innovation with environmental stewardship. It demonstrates how open-source technology can serve as a foundation for sustainable development and how public-private-academic partnerships can play a crucial role in advancing climate neutrality objectives.
The project sets a precedent for future endeavors in the meteorological community, highlighting the importance of data sharing, technological innovation, and collaborative efforts in tackling the multifaceted challenges of climate change. Through this deployment, the partnership has not only contributed to the immediate enhancement of Tonga's meteorological services but also to the broader goal of building a climate-resilient society.
How to cite: Najman, M.: Innovative Public-Private-Academic Collaboration for Climate Resilience: The Deployment of a Sustainable Weather Radar in Tonga, EMS Annual Meeting 2024, Barcelona, Spain, 1–6 Sep 2024, EMS2024-123, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2024-123, 2024.
Practitioners in the agricultural sector are being given a special role in the discussion about CO2 removal (CDR) from the atmosphere. They are expected to apply practices that remove CO2 from the atmosphere and contribute to achieving climate neutrality.
The question is how familiar actors from the agricultural sector are with the concept of CDR and what information they need to implement such practices is an unexplored field of research.
Farmers can apply practices to their land that can change the balance of carbon inputs and losses. Through these practices, also referred to as soil carbon sequestration, the equilibrium level of soil organic carbon content can increase. Such practices include, for example, planting in periods where no plants have been cultivated to date e.g. the cultivation of cover crops. Another method is to shift a plain field into an agroforest. Agroforestry combines crop cultivation, trees and sometimes livestock in one area. By linking arable land, forest, meadows and pastures, CO2 uptake in plants can be increased. A novel method is that farmers add biochar to their fields. Biochar is produced when biomass is burned with very little oxygen. Added to soil it can store carbon for long periods of time and can have positive impacts on the soil.
We have conducted 29 interviews with actors of the agriculture sector in Northern Germany in 2023. We talked to farmers, biochar producers, farmers associations, non-governmental associations, bodies of the local administration to explore the following questions:
- How familiar are agricultural actors with the concept of CDR?
- What do agricultural actors want to know and who needs to know what?
- Which formats are considered best for implementing research findings into practice?
We discovered that there is a gap between research findings and its transfer into practice. We will present the informational needs and suitable formats to improve the implementation of CDR options. In addition, we will share our experiences on how to improve knowledge transfer from research to agricultural practice.
How to cite: El Zohbi, J. and Rechid, D.: Agriculture can contribute to carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere – but what information do regional practitioners need from research? , EMS Annual Meeting 2024, Barcelona, Spain, 1–6 Sep 2024, EMS2024-875, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2024-875, 2024.
Climate change is also changing urban climates, and the number and intensity of heatwaves is increasing, as are flash floods and droughts. Therefore, city administrations and other stakeholders need better information and tools to efficiently manage these new extremes, and adapt their infrastructures to the new realities. Thus, they require operational up-to-date hyperlocal temperature forecast and monitoring to detect “hot spots“, frequency of “heat stress“, and other meteorological benchmark values. These are needed to plan resources and steer short term interventions such as recommending suitable actions to citizens, mobilising helpers, opening heat shelters, etc., as well as policies for construction and management of roads, buildings, parks etc, and for tracking the effectiveness of mitigation measures, such as greening, de-sealing, building insulation, colour changes, etc.
The technical basis is provided by Hyperlocal monitoring and forecasting of temperatures, and other variables. These require reliable urban temperature measurements across a city, linked to urban climate models. This can be achieved at low cost, when researchers, city agencies and private companies work together to develop and employ new technology for this new purpose.
In practice, this requires developing and testing new approaches, overcoming traditional barriers between the players, educating the actors, coordinating efforts and creating business models for continuous improvement. This paper describes the experiences of meteoblue with creating the first operational live city heatmaps with 10 m / 1 h resolution and an hourly MAE of <1.0°C in collaboration with cities in Europe and North America. It also presents a simple project blueprint and recommendations for engagement, for replicating such projects to make many more cities resilient against heatwaves in a short time.
How to cite: Schloegl, S., Gutbrod, K. G., Ramshorn, C., and Bader, N.: Enhancing Urban Resilience to Heatwaves fast through Public-Private Engagement, EMS Annual Meeting 2024, Barcelona, Spain, 1–6 Sep 2024, EMS2024-1078, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2024-1078, 2024.
The availability of climate change models and derived values has produced quantifiable indices for temperatures, precipitation, soil moisture and others, with different scenarios of evolution, These have been developed and made available by the public sector and academia, and now largely been validated within the past 20 years.
These data can be used to calculate the impact of the changes on the future of key resources, such as agricultural land and productivity, in an effort led both by the public and private sector, as these expected changes are of interest to policymakers, business managers, investors as well as to the public at large in sectors ranging from agriculture to energy and urban development and many others.
This paper analyses the potential impact of climate change on the size and productivity of agricultural land until the year 2100 in different regions of the world. It further includes an estimate of world population development and the likely impact on the food demand and supply in different regions of the world.
Based on these predictions, the paper addresses the most likely policy and business implications. and the need for the public and private sectors to cooperate in mastering the expected challenges.
It concludes by showing the areas in which meteorology has a significant or even essential influence on the decisions to be taken and demonstrates some simple applications to access climate data which can be used for estimating further climate evolution on a local level and quantifying the impact of this evolution on various policy and business decisions.
How to cite: Gutbrod, Dr. K. G., Schloegl, Dr. S., Wenzel, C., and Ramshorn, C.: Modelling Changes in Climate and Land Use in 2100. Importance of climate for business and policy., EMS Annual Meeting 2024, Barcelona, Spain, 1–6 Sep 2024, EMS2024-1079, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2024-1079, 2024.
Approximately 90% of trade occurs through maritime shipping, which makes it a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 3% of global emissions [1]. Reducing the carbon footprint of maritime industry is therefore crucial to combat climate change and achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. One effective approach to decarbonize the industry is through weather routing. It is a cost-effective tool, which allows shipping companies to select the most energy-efficient navigation routes.
Adverse weather conditions, such as rough sea state, strong winds and currents can increase voyage time and ship’s resistance, leading to higher fuel consumption rates. Our research is centered on the integration of weather forecasts into voyage planning to identify optimal and most sustainable routes. Effective route optimization depends on the availability of reliable weather forecasts. To this end, we have established collaborative partnerships with several academic institutions to access high-quality model and satellite data. Moreover, we address the inherent uncertainty of weather models by integrating Artificial Intelligence algorithms to enhance accuracy of our analysis.
Our results based on numerous case studies demonstrate the benefits of weather routing solutions. We have consistently observed reduction in fuel consumption and travel time by at least 3-10% across various scenarios, which is substantial given the scale of the maritime industry. With shorter voyage times and consequently fuel consumption, our approach leads to decreases in operating costs. This cost efficiency provides an incentive for mariners to adopt more sustainable solutions, which are relatively easy to implement in their daily operations.
Our developments and collaborative approach underscore the potential of weather routing as an efficient tool to support climate-neutrality goals within the maritime industry. Substantial fuel savings and reduced greenhouse gas emissions can by achieved with minimal route adjustments, which emphasizes the importance of integrating weather routing strategies into maritime operations to facilitate the industry’s transition towards a more sustainable future.
[1] Arslan, O., E. Besikci, and A. Olcer. "Improving energy efficiency of ships through optimisation of ship operations." No. FY2014-3 IAMU (2014).
How to cite: Zygarlowska, E., Dumard, C., and Rochut, B.: Weather routing solutions towards decarbonisation of maritime transport, EMS Annual Meeting 2024, Barcelona, Spain, 1–6 Sep 2024, EMS2024-1100, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2024-1100, 2024.
Ship weather routing is particularly at stake in the shipping industry to meet decarbonization objectives. Besides, as wind propulsion is one of the solutions for effective decarbonization, new applications of weather routing appear. First of all, technically, few algorithms are versatile enough to deal with any kind of propulsion (sail, motor, and hybrid). In this context, D-ICE developed an efficient and robust multi-objective weather routing algorithm that reaches this goal and is embedded onboard Canopée, the first modern sail-assisted cargo.
Then, as hybrid-propelled ship performances are directly linked to weather routing, route optimization has to be integrated directly during the design phase, to accurately assess the viability of a project and quantify the associated return on investment. To do so, D-ICE is often acting as a third party for ship owners to compute statistical weather routing studies, meaning simulating hundreds of voyages in the past years, using ECMWF reanalysis weather datasets.
However, a potential bias in those statistical studies is the computation of optimal paths based on historical weather data, meaning that the route is optimized knowing in advance the weather evolution, which is not the case in operation as only forecasts are available. This is a critical issue for the relevancy of such studies in the decision-making process of ship-owners.
Here we present a study whose objective is to quantify this bias in statistical routing studies. To do so we access ECMWF archives of forecasts and simulate hundreds of past voyages following an operational strategy: meaning a daily weather routing, computed with available weather forecasts at that time. The savings associated with this route optimization strategy are then compared to the results given based on the historical weather data. Some insight about weather routing robustness and weather conditions that could lead to uncertainties will be highlighted, and a compromise will be discussed between computing time (drastically increased with such procedure) and results accuracy.
Keywords: weather routing, wind propulsion, multi-objective shortest path algorithms, voyage optimization, historical reanalysis dataset, operational archives
How to cite: Michel, S. and Dupuy, M.: About the impact of using weather forecasts in statistical weatherrouting studies, EMS Annual Meeting 2024, Barcelona, Spain, 1–6 Sep 2024, EMS2024-1125, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2024-1125, 2024.
Climate transition risks arise during the global transition to a low-carbon economy. These risks encompass four principal subcategories: legal and policy, technological, market, and reputational. This study reviews climate transition risks for Lithuania's economic sectors and evaluates them by using the methodology developed by the authors of this work. In this study, non-financial enterprises were analysed. Six economic sector types (NACE branches) with the highest turnover in 2022 were selected for analysis: (1) manufacturing, (2) wholesale and retail trade, (3) electricity, gas, steam, and air conditioning supply, (4) information and communication, (5) construction, and (6) transportation and storage. For each selected economic sector type, thirty companies with the highest revenues in 2021 were selected for analysis. This study analysed selected companies' strategies for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030 and 2050, alongside evaluating their GHG reports across three scopes. Furthermore, financial metrics (debt-to-equity ratio and return on assets), as well as organization structures were considered. Based on the results of a study by the European Central Bank (ECB/ESRB, 2021), each economic sector type was assigned a score that assesses the long-term impact of a rapid transition from fossil fuels. Transition risks were categorized into five tiers: very high, high, moderate, low, or very low, and subsequently attributed to the analysed companies. The results are presented by aggregating the risks according to NACE branches. Obtained results indicate that in Lithuania, a very high transitional risk arises for companies engaged in transportation and storage, as well as construction activities. It was found that Lithuania's companies engaged in construction activities most often do not have climate and energy strategies for reducing GHG emissions by 2030 and 2050, and neglecting potential climate change-related risks. High risk was identified for Lithuanian companies engaged in wholesale and retail trade, and energy supply companies. The low risk was identified for companies engaged in information and communication activities. The financial results of information and communication companies are good, with many of them having 2030 and 2050 climate and energy strategies and the climate transition risk long-term impact for them is low as well. The conducted research is important as an early warning indicator of existing climate transition risks and the increasing need to adequately prepare for them.
How to cite: Kapilovaite, J. and Daugvila, D.: Climate Transition Risks for Lithuania’s Economy, EMS Annual Meeting 2024, Barcelona, Spain, 1–6 Sep 2024, EMS2024-347, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2024-347, 2024.
The Catalan Institute for Energy (ICAEN) is a public corporation of the Government of Catalonia whose mission, since 1991, is the promotion of energy efficiency and renewable energies, the elaboration of energy planning and policies of Catalonia, and the compilation of energy statistics. In particular, and with regard to solar energy, ICAEN established a solar radiation measurement network across the country and has kept it in operation until the present. This network includes 10 stations devoted to the measurement of global and diffuse radiation. Based on the data collected, which is made available on demand to interested users, two versions of Solar Radiation Atlas in Catalonia have been prepared in the past (1995, 2000). The maintenance of the stations, the updating of instruments and data loggers, and the processing of the data has been performed, over time, with the collaboration of academic institutions: the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, between 1990 and 2021; and the Universitat de Girona, from 2022 to the present. Researchers from these universities have provided their expertise in solar radiation and climatology. In addition, several selfless collaborators have taken care of each station. Currently, traditional Kipp&Zonen CM11 pyranometers (or similar models), one of which in each site is installed with a sun band for the measurement of diffuse radiation, are being replaced by DeltaLink SPN1 instruments that simultaneously measure global and diffuse radiation and upload the data, in real time via the internet, on a central server. All historical data are currently being reanalyzed with stricter quality control and a new Atlas of solar radiation in Catalonia is being drawn up. In summary, this long-term collaboration between university and administration is an example of success, resulting in very long (over 30 years in some cases) solar radiation data sets of high quality and with notable spatial density (1 station every 3000 square km approximately).
How to cite: Calbó, J., González, J.-A., Enríquez-Alonso, A., Baldasano, J. M., Esteve, J., and Rotllan, M.: Long term university-administration collaboration for assessing solar radiation resource in Catalonia, EMS Annual Meeting 2024, Barcelona, Spain, 1–6 Sep 2024, EMS2024-570, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2024-570, 2024.
Switzerland's current Energy Strategy 2050 pursues two key objectives: Abandoning nuclear power plants in the long term and supporting climate policy that implements measures to achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement, which essentially means achieving zero net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. The strategy therefore includes the promotion of renewable energies in Switzerland as well as savings and market measures to increase the efficiency of the energy supply. The strong dependence of both the production and consumption of energy on weather means that there is a great need for customized weather and climate information. This need suddenly became urgent in the fall 2022, when the conflict in Ukraine jeopardized the supply of natural gas and, in addition, water reserves were significantly below average after a dry summer, which also jeopardized domestic energy production strongly depending on hydropower.
In this situation, MeteoSwiss quickly developed a special weekly bulletin for the energy sector providing a detailed picture on past and future heating energy demand. It is based on tools from established climate and temperature forecasting services and tailored to the energy sector by providing monitoring and forecasts in the form of heating degree days (HDD). Expressing both monitoring and sub-seasonal to seasonal forecasts in terms of HDD and relative to climatology proved to be useful identifying energy shortages and taking early action. As there is inevitably considerable uncertainty associated with long-term forecasts, one of the challenges was to convey this uncertainty while still providing actionable information.
We present the different product elements of the energy bulletin and then discuss our experience in this example of rapid service development in response to an urgent need, covering both technical and organizational aspects.
How to cite: Spirig, C., Begert, M., Isotta, F., Posselt, R., Scherrer, S. C., Schlegel, T., Moret, L., and Croci-Maspoli, M.: Tailored Weather and Climate Services for Energy Management: Lessons Learned from Introducing a New Energy Bulletin , EMS Annual Meeting 2024, Barcelona, Spain, 1–6 Sep 2024, EMS2024-882, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2024-882, 2024.
