The three pilots have the goal to strengthen urban resilience to extreme weather using various time-scales (sub-seasonal and seasonal forecasts, as well as climate projections).  

The pilots provide:

• sub-seasonal and seasonal forecast products for the city of Helsinki including e.g. snow accumulation, long freezing periods during winter, warm weather periods during winter, slippery conditions for pedestrians and conditions for spring street cleaning
• seasonal forecasts products with a focus on summer heat and dry conditions for different German cities (e.g. Aschaffenburg) using a statistical down-scaling approach to reach a higher spatial resolution without losing forecast skill
• climate projection products for various Austrian cities with a focus on summer heat load for urban planning, risk management and environmental protection

The seasonal climate predictions for the 16 German state capital cities and Aschaffenburg (e-shape partner for the service developing) have been developed by DWD. The service provides maps, time series and tables of the ensemble mean and probabilistic temperature and precipitation predictions in combination with the prediction skill. The production of the seasonal climate outlooks is fully operational on inhouse DWD servers. The pilot service is disseminated to the end-user through the DWD climate prediction website, which is an in-house developed website to deliver all kind of (seamless) climate prediction products to the German customers. The pilot is accessible through www.dwd.de/klimavorhersagen. The e-shape pilot service is accessible via the "Basic Climate Predictions" and "Seasonal Climate Predictions" choice. The cities are available through the selection menu „Region“. The user can switch between the languages German and English. The e-shape pilot is available since the forecast period "December-May" 2021.

The service developed for the City of Helsinki by FMI has two components: the sub-seasonal and seasonal climate outlooks. The production of sub-seasonal (6-week) climate outlooks is run on FMI servers and results are disseminated to the user through an online user interface, the Ilmatie/Ilmanet platform, which is an in-house developed tool used by FMI Customer Service department to deliver weather services to the customers. The service for the sub-seasonal climate outlooks is accessible from http://ilmanet.fi using the following credentials:

          User ID: eshape-pilot-helsink

          Password: eshape2020

The service was implemented through iteration with users during the winter seasons. The service has been run operationally with all the climate outlooks since December 2020.

The production of seasonal climate outlooks runs on WEkEO, one of the Copernicus DIAS services and are disseminated to the users through the seasonal.fmi.fi web-portal, accessible on http://seasonal.fmi.fi/e-shape/helsinki. The service for seasonal climate outlooks is operational since January 2021.

The climate projection service has been developed by ZAMG for the city of Vienna with option to be extended for other cities in Austria. It provides past development and future projections of heat-related climate indices for urban regions available for download and displayed as interactive maps and time series. The pilot uses data server and software applications of the Climate Change Center Austria (CCCA) for visualization and data dissemination. The calculation of climate projections using global/regional climate data and urban model simulations takes place on inhouse ZAMG HPC-systems. The post-processed data in netcdf Format are uploaded to the CCCA platform available on the website: https://data.ccca.ac.at/.

Data access is free, but requires a registration. Login information can be acquired using the form: https://data.ccca.ac.at/contact.

The E-Shape pilot-prototype is accessible through the link: https://data.ccca.ac.at/en/dataset/summer-days-in-vienna-for-2011-2100-based-on-euro-cordex-models-under-ipcc-rcp4-5-scenario-v01.

The data are available for download and can be previewed for selected region and time period. The user can further explore the dataset metadata by selecting options in the menu, such as: Contact, Basic, Keywords, Spatial, Time, Specifics, Quality and Conformity.

Outcome of the pilots:

• time series and tables of forecasts (month 1-3 till month 4-6), both as ensemble mean prediction and probabilistic prediction
• graphs of six week and monthly climate outlooks (given the point forecast feature), further including information on climatology and observations   from previous years
• high resolution maps with heat load information for different climate projection scenarios

ECMWF platform, Copernicus CDS and platforms from national meteorological services (DWD, ZAMG and FMI). 

At this present stage, ZAMG is not in the operational phase for MUKLIMO_3 derived data derivatives for set up processes within the WeKEO infrastructure environment. Under the scaling up procedure to adapt the methods on further products, it seems synergistically to use the WeKEO DIAS platform, foreseen for end of 2021. 

Web based application

DWD pilot for the 16 German state capital cities and Aschaffenburg: www.dwd.de/klimavorhersagen The service is accessible through the "Basic Climate Predictions" and "Seasonal Climate Predictions". The cities are available through the selection menu „Region“.

FMI pilot for the city of Helsinki: The service for the sub-seasonal climate outlooks is accessible from http://ilmanet.fi using the following credentials (User ID: eshape-pilot-helsink, Password: eshape2020). The seasonal climate outlooks are disseminated to the users through the seasonal.fmi.fi web-portal, accessible on http://seasonal.fmi.fi/e-shape/helsinki.

ZAMG pilot for Vienna and Austrian cities: The service is available through the Climate Change Center Austria (CCCA) platform https://data.ccca.ac.at/. Data access is free, but requires a registration. Login information can be acquired using the form: https://data.ccca.ac.at/contact.

The pilots serve mainly end users from municipalities entrusted with urban and environmental planning, climate adaptation, municipal utilities and risk management.

• The seasonal and sub-seasonal forecast products tailored for winter maintenance activities serve the city authorities in planning their activities, improving winter safety and optimizing maintenance costs.
• The seasonal forecast products focusing on summer heat and dry periods help the cities authorities to plan for urban green irrigation, also with regard to scarce water resources and distribution across different sectors (e.g. agriculture). Furthermore, health authorities can plan and prepare for severe heat waves.
• The climate projections focusing on heat load help the urban planning authorities to create climate resilient cities focusing on climate adaptation and risk assessment. These urban climate model simulations are scientific base, where scenarios provide a future view in a reproducible manner which can be used for impact analyses by 'climate service operator' like SME, Meteo Services etc.

• Assessing the quality and applicability of sub-seasonal and seasonal climate forecast products for cities in Finland and Germany as well as climate scenarios adapted for Austrian cities.
• Demonstration of an added value of sub-seasonal and seasonal forecast products for urban planning purposes and decision making.
• Provided data services via e-shape frame work will bring an expected impact like a kind of standardized data service, which enable docking layer for quality assurance and comparable services.

DWD does not plan a data download, since most of the data is available elsewhere (ECMWF, C3S, DWD open data etc.) and the climate prediction website presents a summary (analysis) of the data for different end user groups. In adjustment with DWD, ZAMG will provide data as open as possible.

SDG 11 | SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND COMMUNITIES

The three e-shape pilots support the progress in achieving SDG 11 and 13.

The three services aim at decreasing the vulnerability of urban population and increasing the preparedness to hazardous weather events and risks caused by climate change.

Sub-seasonal and seasonal forecasts for urban areas help preparing for hazardous summer and winter weather conditions (e.g. winter maintenance activities and disaster risk reduction management against “urban” heat).

The urban climate projections provide the climatological scientific basis for mid-term and long-term human settlements planning and management especially against heat in disaster-prone areas.