PRECIS (Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies)

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change requires participating nations to assess the potential effects of Climate change upon their countries.

Part of that agreement called for Developed nations to [http://unfccc.int/cooperation_and_support/technology/items/1126.php transfer technology] to Developing nations in order to help build up their technological infrastructure with the goal of enabling all countries involved to carry out the necessary Climate change impacts studies to inform government policy.

PRECIS development

With this in mind, the [http://precis.metoffice.com PRECIS Regional Climate Modelling system] was developed. PRECIS stands for “Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies.” Funding for PRECIS is provided by [http://www.defra.gov.uk DEFRA] (the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), DFID (the [http://www.dfid.gov.uk UK Department for International Development] ), the UK [http://www.fco.gov.uk FCO] (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) and the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme).

PRECIS enables scientists from the around the globe to run a regional climate model towards carrying our research into climate change, and it does so at very little cost to the user and with low infrastructure requirement.

The model

At the heart of PRECIS is the HadRM3P regional climate model, a regional model based on the UK Met Office's HadCM3 General circulation model. In addition to the regional model, the boundary data (the global model output to provide for data at the regional boundaries) is provided, as is a Graphical user interface that allows the regional model to be easily configured, a week long training workshop providing scientific and technical training, and then technical support after the workshop.

To date, PRECIS has been used by scientists and academics in many countries all over the world. The number of users and countries using PRECIS continues to increase.

Free software

PRECIS and the required training workshop are free of charge to representatives of [http://unfccc.int/parties_and_observers/parties/non_annex_i/items/2833.php non-Annex I] (i.e. developing) nations. In line with the low cost approach, PRECIS runs on a 32 bit PC running the free Linux operating system. The model will run at either 50km or 25km resolution, and is designed to be easy to run and cope with interruptions to the model run.

External links

* [http://precis.metoffice.com Official PRECIS website] .