The Jeddah-based Center of Excellence for Climate Change Research (CECCR) has emerged as a major facility for research in the region. It is building a climate database and performing test runs for regional climate models.
"Given the enormous impact of recent climate change on various sectors of society such as agriculture, water resources and power generation, the Kingdom decided to set up the CECCR last year," said Mansour Almazroui, CECCR director and head of the department of meteorology at King Abdulaziz University (KAU) Sunday. Almazroui was speaking on the occasion of CECCR’s first scientific meeting at KAU.
Prominent speakers at the meeting included Ghassem R. Asrar, director of the World Climate Research Program at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and KAU expert prof. In-Sik Kang.
The meeting was significant keeping in view changing climatic conditions in the Kingdom and the region as a whole. With the exception of Asir province, Saudi Arabia has a desert climate characterized by extreme heat during the day, an abrupt drop in temperature at night, and very low annual rainfall.
Speaking on the initiative for leading regional and global climate research programs, Almazroui said that the CECCR was engaged in developing and utilizing global and regional climate models.
Moreover, it also studies climate change and its possible impacts on society and provides consultations for decision makers in the Kingdom, he added.
He explained the research programs pursued at the CECCR include building a climate database, performing test runs for Regional Climate Models (RCMs) and Global Climate Models (GCMs).
Several sensitivity studies of these models are ongoing to understand the implication of dynamics implied by these models for the Arabian Peninsula, he added.
Furthermore, attempts are underway to downscale the output of the RCMs and GCMs to provide projections of the local climate and to perform long-term weather forecasting including extreme events and sea level rises in the region, he added.
Cumulatively, these attempts will serve as a broad framework for regional disaster management teams to adopt, he observed.
Referring to the challenges and opportunities in climate research, Asrar said "climate change and natural variations are of great concern to society.”
Observations of the earth system during the past 50 years reveal frequent and unwelcome anomalies in temperature, rainfall, ice cover and sea level, he added. The WMO expert said that climate science has advanced significantly during the past three decades, yet many scientific challenges remain.
Speaking on his part about global climate modeling and prediction at the CECCR, Kang said that the center has been successfully involved in various research programs and high-resolution global climate modeling activities. He also spoke about how the KAU climate modeling team is collaborating with local human resources while working together with the international research community.
