Climate System

The climate system group works on process-driven understanding of the climate system and how it is changing under natural and anthropogenic influence, with a focus on the atmosphere, land surface, and their interactions. 

Our work spans from purely academic to commissioned research for relevant stakeholders and dissemination to a wide specter of audience.  The research often has important links to climate mitigation and climate impacts/adaptation, and we have broad collaboration with other CICERO groups. 

Research topics  include the climate response across different time scales (rapid adjustments and slow response), global and regional evolution and drivers of physical climate hazards, including precipitation changes and extreme events, and atmospheric distribution, processing, and radiative forcing of in particular aerosols and short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs).

We study how changes in emissions and other anthropogenic activities in different regions and economic sectors contribute to climate and environmental impacts, with focus regions including Europe, Asia, Africa and the Arctic.

Understanding and modeling terrestrial ecosystems and their role in the climate system is another key research topic which includes understanding both the effect of different types of forest management, and the response of natural (unmanaged) forests and other ecosystems to climate change. Important interactions between the land surface and the atmosphere, such as wildfire, emissions of natural aerosols, and feedback processes are also studied. We also develop, evaluate and apply different metrics for comparing emission sectors and regions.
We are primarily a modeling group, with tools ranging from global earth system models to fine-scale process models and simplified climate models/emulators.

The key tools in use include the chemical transport model OsloCTM3, land surface models CLM and FATES, Earth System Models CESM and NorESM, and the CICERO Simple Climate Model. Additional methods include the analysis and use of observational and large model simulation datasets. 

Researchers in the Climate System group contribute to scientific assessments and processes such as the IPCC and AMAP reports and model intercomparison projects (CMIP, RAMIP), and engage in scientific and stakeholder networks.