Project CECILIA (Central and Eastern Europe Climate Change Impact and Vulnerability Assessment) started on June 1st 2006 as a part of the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Union, with sixteen institutions from twelve European countries taking part in its research activities. CECILIA's primary mission is to improve the understanding of local climate change in Central and Eastern Europe and its impacts into forestry, agriculture, hydrology and air quality.
The main objective of CECILIA is to deliver a climate change impacts and vulnerability assessment in targeted areas of Central and Eastern Europe. Emphasis is given to applications of regional climate modelling studies at a resolution of 10 km for local impact studies in key sectors of the region. The project contains studies of hydrology, water quality, and water management (focusing at medium-sized river catchments and the Black Sea coast), air quality issues in urban areas (Black Triangle - a polluted region around the common borders of the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany), agriculture (crop yield, pests and diseases, carbon cycle), and forestry (management, carbon cycle). Very high resolution simulations over this region are necessary due to the presence of complex topographical and land use features. Climate change impacts on large urban and industrial areas modulated by topographical and land-use effects which can be resolved at the 10 km scale, are investigated by CECILIA. The high spatial and temporal resolution of dense national observational networks at high temporal resolution and of the CECILIA regional model experiments will uniquely feed into investigations of climate change consequences for weather extremes in the region under study. Comparison with the results based on statistical downscaling techniques will also be provided. Statistical downscaling methods for verification of the regional model results will be developed and applied, and assessments of their use in localization of model output for impact studies will be performed.
CECILIA's research topics are divided into seven individual workpackages, while the overall project organization is provided by the project office, represented by project coordinator and project manager. Details on CECILIA's objectives can be found here, contact information are available here.
The project database can be accessed here: http://cecilia.dmi.dk
Individual deliverables can be accessed here.