Winter is disappearing: changes in hydroclimatic winter variables and extremes, and their impacts on agriculture

Winter warming and a shorter snow-cover season threatens the balance of the ecosystem and causes socio-economic challenges, with impacts cascading from winter into other seasons.

Despite significant efforts to understand the impacts of climate change, so far, winter changes and variations have not been fully understood, and it is still unclear how winter changes complement other seasonal changes, extremes and impacts.

In this project, I aim to shed light on these missing pieces through three complementary objectives: 1) attribution of changes in the climatic variables, and quantification of uncertainties due to internal variability and anthropogenic climate change 2) Identification of climatic extremes 3) Quantification of crop yield responses to climatic variabilities and extremes.This project will be carried out for 36 months and builds upon collaborations with multiple researchers, bringing together unique expertise essential to this project, including ensemble climate modeling techniques, modeling and attribution of the impacts of extreme events, and understanding of physiological responses of crops to climate change.Through a multidisciplinary framework, this project strengthens the knowledge on climate change risks and opportunities at the high latitudes.

Further it allows to identify long-term benefits and drawbacks of warmer climates for the crop yields, thus contributing to public benefit through identification of better management strategies for agriculture.