B-EPICC final conference: Reducing the gap between climate research and its application

Together with PIK scientists from different disciplines, B-EPICC researchers and colleagues from the partner countries are going to look back on six years of collaborative work to reduce the gap between climate research and its application in policy and societal decision-making at national, regional and local levels in the project´s partner countries. They will compare the situations in the partner countries, discuss possible joint research and capacity building initiatives and present their findings on climate services in water/hydrology, forests, agriculture and climate-linked migration.

In recent years, the project and its researchers have contributed to more reliable long-term El Niño forecasting. They have also developed a novel high-resolution gridded precipitation data set for hydrological modelling of Peruvian and Ecuadorian watersheds (RAIN4PE). Another new approach that was developed in the project for the long-term prediction of the Indian summer monsoon is of crucial importance for the management of agricultural, water and energy resources. Additionally, they have published Risk reports on climate migration in Peru, India and Tanzania , providing evidence of how climate change affects human migration and displacement, as well as how to respond to it.

As a capacity building project, B-EPICC focused on collaboratively identifying with local partners and stakeholders how sound climate models and related tools and services can be tailored to user-specific needs and priorities. The project was funded by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), implemented by the Federal Foreign Office (AA). In 2021, after four years of successful work, the EPICC Project received a prolongation for two more years. With Brazil and Ethiopia, two new countries joined as B-EPICC’s partner countries.