About the group

The main activity of the group concerns the use of regional climate models to perform dynamic downscaling of the climate at regional scale. This technique is used within the group for a variety of applications, such as the generation of climate change projections and paleoclimate simulations, the assessment of renewable energy resources, gaining insight on the link between synoptic patterns and local conditions, or the study of the interactions between climate and air quality. Hence, our main topics of interest cover:

1. Regional climate modelling and climate change projections.
2. Air Quality-Climate Interactions (AQCI).
3. Paleoclimatology.
4. Extreme events (heatwaves, precipitation, drought, winds, wildfires).
5. Energy and climate change.

Several studies have been developed on the sensitivity of the simulations to the parameterization of physical processes of the regional climate model, the land surface-atmosphere coupling, the use of 'nudging' techniques, the topography or the use of different external radiative forcings, both for past (paleoclimate) and future scenarios. The study of air-quality is another important topic tackled by the group. Several climatological studies have been carried out using the third generation of chemical transport models, as well as incorporating the production of experimental field data in collaboration with various national and international research groups. 

Finally, the MAR group has also developed models for renewable energy distribution and production, as well as statistical methodologies for climate classifications (Weather and Circulation types). The MAR group has its own supercomputing system installed and maintained by IT staff of the University of Murcia, which is in permanent growth according to the requirements of on-going projects and availability of funding. The group has an extensive and very active network of collaborations with various national groups, such as PALMA (UCM), MATRAS (UJA), the Climate, Meteorology and Environment Group of the UPV, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS), the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology of the Spanish Research Council (IPE, CSIC) and other groups from different universities (UGR, UAL, UCantabria, etc). This network gets extended at the international level through numerous collaborations with different groups within and beyond Europe. They involve institutions like the Environmental Sciences Research Centre (Canada), the Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht (Germany), the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the University of California at Irvine (UCI), the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), the Lancaster Environment Centre (Lancaster, UK), the University of Porto (Portugal), the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR, USA), the Instituto Dom Luiz of the University of Lisbon (Portugal), Le Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (LSCE, France), the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (Switzerland) and the University of Washington (UW, U.S.).

Further international experience of the group steams from its participation in international projects or initiatives. The group has participated in the project CAIMANs - Cruise and passenger ship Air quality Impact Mitigation ActioNs or APICE - Common Mediterranean strategy and local practical Actions for the mitigation of Port, Industries and Cities Emissions (European Union ERDF - MED PROGRAM). It also contributes to the COST Action 1004 EuMetChem (European framework for online integrated air quality and meteorology modeling), coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization. Moreover, the group has been invited to participate in a number of international initiatives, such as the COordinated Regional climate Downscaling Experiment – EUROpean domain (EURO-CORDEX) of the World Climate Research Programme, the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project phase 2 (ISI-MIP2) or the Air Quality Modeling Evaluation International Initiative (AQMEII; currently the group is involved in AQMEII-Phase 3/Task Force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution - HTAP, led by the Joint Research Center of the UE and the United States Environmental Agency - USEPA).

Main publications

1. Turco, M., Rosa-Cánovas, J.J., Bedía, J., Jerez, S., Montávez, J.P., Llasat, M.C., Provenzale, A., 2018. Exacerbated fires in Mediterranean Europe due to anthropogenic warming projected with non-stationary climate-fire models. Nature Comms., 9:3821.

2. Palacios-Peña, L., Baro, R., Baklanov, A., Balzarini, A., Brunner, D., Forkel, R., Hirtl, M., Honzak, L., Lopez-Romero, J. M., Montavez, J. P., Perez, J. L., Pirovano, G., San Jose, R., Schroeder, W., Werhahn, J., Wolke, R., Zabkar, R., and Jimenez-Guerrero, P., 2018. An assessment of aerosol optical properties from remote-sensing observations and regional chemistry-climate coupled models over Europe. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 18:5021–5043.

3. Jerez, S., Lopez-Romero, J. M., Turco, M., Jimenez-Guerrero, P., Vautard, R., and Montavez, J. P., 2018. Impact of evolving greenhouse gas forcing on the warming signal in regional climate model experiments. Nature Comms., 9(1):1304.

4. Luterbacher, J., Werner, J. P., Smerdon, J. E., Fernández-Donado, L., González-Rouco, F. J., Barriopedro, D., Gómez-Navarro, J.J., et al., 2016. European summer temperatures since Roman times. Environ. Res. Lett., 11(2): 024001.

5. Jerez, S., Tobin, I., Vautard, R., Montávez, J. P., López-Romero, J. M., Thais, F., Bartok, B., Christensen, O. B., Colette, A., Déqué, A., Nikulin, G., Kotlarski, S., van Meijgaard, E., Teichmann, C., Wild, M., 2015. The impact of climate change on photovoltaic power generation in Europe. Nature Comms., 6:10014.