Research

Research on climate extremes.

Research by Wim Thiery and his group (BCLIMATE, °2017) focuses on extreme events, climate change impacts, energy meteorology, and land-atmosphere interactions. Hereto the team employs global climate modelling, land surface modelling, field observations and ensemble data mining. Much of his research builds on the Community Earth System Model (CESM) and its land surface module, the Community land Model (CLM). A key research line of the team is the Detection and attribution of climate change impacts: In a science study published in Science in 2021, Thiery and colleagues analysed lifetime extreme event exposure across a range of birth cohorts, highlighting that today’s children will live an unprecedented life even under low-end warming scenarios (see pdf).

Global-scale impact modelling.

The BCLIMATE group is a key player in the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP), currently the most comprehensive source of global-scale climate impact information and a central data source for climate change impact assessments by the IPCC. The effort is coordinated by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), the world’s number one climate think tank. Over 630 scientists contribute expertise to this network. Wim Thiery is currently ISIMIP’s largest data provider, with public-domain output from CLM4.5 amounting up to 30% of all ISIMIP2b output. In addition, he is co-founder of the lake sector, co-leader of this sector since 2017 and ISIMIP Strategy Group member. Finally, he co-leads a work package on ‘Common datasets and protocols’ in PROCLIAS, a COST action supporting cross-sectoral impact modelling in ISIMIP.

Current research topics

- Detection and attribution of extreme event exposure and climate change impacts: The team uses ISIMIP simulations to perform detection and attribution of hydrological and limnological variables. In addition, Thiery and colleagues analysed lifetime extreme event exposure across a range of birth cohorts, highlighting that children will live an unprecedented life even under low-end warming scenarios.

- Land management effects on climate: Land irrigation is an essential practice sustaining global food production and many regional economies. During the last decades, irrigation amounts have been growing rapidly. However, this evolution might be constrained by future water scarcity, as water resources could become regionally depleted following changes in precipitation and the hydrological cycle under rising anthropogenic greenhouse gas levels and ongoing water use. In recent work Thiery and colleagues showed that irrigation has a strong cooling effect during hot days which even offsets global warming signals locally (see pdf). This line of research is continued by developing reservoir and irrigation parameterisations in CESM (PhDs Inne Vanderkelen, Yi Yao) and quantifying impacts of land cover and management change on climate (PhDs Steven De Hertog, Luke Grant). The focus lies on the role of these interactions in alleviating extreme events.

- Energy meteorology: The team uses high-resolution hybrid climatological and hydrological data products to map renewable energy resources across Africa, model flexible power mix scenarios for the region, and provide energy policy advice on this basis. The open-source REVUB model developed to this end improves scientific understanding of potential synergies between various renewable energy sources and supports decision making in Africa (PhD Sebastian Sterl).

- Storm warnings: Early work of Prof. Thiery includes several high-profile publications on the impacts of the African Great Lakes on the regional climate. Building on this work, he developed a storm warning system for Lake Victoria and operates weather stations on Lake Kivu and Lake Victoria.

Policy engagement

Wim Thiery and his team frequently engage with policy makers on climate change matters. For instance, in 2020 the team conducted a study of the evolution of cold extremes in NW-Europe (‘Winter is leaving’), which he presented to the Belgian Minister for Energy and the Federal parliament. Based on this report, a new rule has been adopted by all European grid regulators, requiring the incorporation of climate change in grid adequacy planning. Finally, his team actively contributed to the 2021 revisions of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of Ivory Coast, Gabon, Niger, Mali, Cameroon, and Eswatini. This consulting directly builds on pioneering research of Wim Thiery and his his colleague Sebastian Sterl (PhD in BCLIMATE group 2021).