Interdisciplinary Workshop

Effects of climate change: coastal systems, policy implications, and the role of statistics

Workshop 18-20 March 2009, Preluna Hotel and Spa, Sliema, Malta

Intense course for young researchers on
Statistical software for climate research, 16-17 March 2009.

Workshop schedule
Talk slides for download
Poster presentations for download
Software course material

Organizers:

Peter Guttorp, University of Washington
Hans Hanson, Lund University
Ulla Holst, Lund University
Georg Lindgren, Lund University
Jaak Monbaliu, K.U. Leuven
Tarmo Soomere, Tallinn University of Technology

Topics:

The themes for the workshop are facts and uncertainties of climate change and its effects on coastal systems and marine safety, and the use of modern statistical tools to address some of these important issues.

Statistics and climate extremes

Peter Guttorp, University of Washington, Seattle: Looking for climate change signals in extreme temperatures
Rick Katz, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder: Improving the treatment of extremes in the generation of climate change scenarios
Johan Lindström, Lund University: Estimation of non-stationary fields, applied to seabed data
Richard Smith, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Gaute Storhaug, Det Norske Veritas, Hövik: IACS URS11 defines the dimensional wave load for ship design - but what does it mean from a statistical point of view?
Bo Ranneby, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå: Probabilistic classifiers using NN-balls

Climate change effects

Myles Allen, University of Oxford
Charmaine Dean, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver: Looking for climate change signals in the Canadian forest fire ignition record
Erik Kjellström, Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Norrköping: Changes in northern European wind climate: climate models and observational data
Andreas Sterl, KNMI, De Bilt:Hot temperatures and storm surges: Modelling the change of climate extremes
Paul Whitfield, Earth Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver: Floods in future climates - process and statistical issues
Judith Wolf, Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, Liverpool: Wave climate changes on the NW European shelf from model downscaling

Response of coastal systems to climate change

Ulrika Roupé, Maritime Operations Division, SSPA Sweden AB: Coastal Hazards Management - a climate change challenge
Fredrik Gröndahl, Dept of Industrial Ecology, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm: Sustainable use of Baltic Sea natural resources based on ecological engineering and biogas production
José António Macedo, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recurso Genéticos, Departimento de Botânica, Universidade de Porto: Theoretical approaches to practical challenges: Coastal dune ecology and integrated coastal zone management in an era of environmental changes
Jens Würgler Hansen, Danish Ministry of the Environment, Denmark: Effects and indicators of climate change in Danish coastal waters
Hans Hanson, Dept of Water Resources Engineering, Lund University: Coastal flooding and erosion - documented trends and possible impacts from climate change
Jaak Monbaliu, K.U. Leuven: Natural and anthropogenic influence on sediment dynamics in the Belgian coastal zone. Can they be separated and what are the policy implications in a changing climate?
Dries Van den Eynde, Coordinator of the CLIMAR project, Management Unit of the North Sea Mathematical Models , Brussels: Evaluation of climate change impacts and adaption responses for marine activities
Tomas Torsvik, Technical University of Tallinn: Ship wakes in Tallinn bay: experimental and numerical study

Structure of workshop

All Wednesday-Friday we will have invited talks with substantial time for discussion, as well as brief invitations to the afternoon poster sessions. At the end of every day we will try to summarize the main open questions and the suggestions made for attacking them. Schedule.

The workshop will be preceeded by one or two intense courses for young researchers. At present Eric Gilleland (NCAR) has agreed to give an intense course in the use of the statistical R-package for use with meteorological data. The course(s) will be held at the Preluna Hotel immediately before the workshop. It will start in the afternoon on Monday, March 16.

Practical details

A number of rooms have been pre-booked at Preluna Hotel (single and some doubles) for the participants. For practical information, contact Georg Lindgren, Mathematical Statistics, Lund.

Participants in the workshop are expected to arrive on Tuesday, March 17, and leave Saturday, March 21. Those who want to take part in the software course have a chance to arrive about noon on the Monday. For those who want to see more of Malta after the workshop some touristic program will be arranged.

Requests to participate

There will be some spaces reserved for non-invited participants. These are primaily intended for young researchers. Application details will be posted here when they become available.