The end of 2023 was a busy time for CONFESS as we presented the findings of the project at a number of high profile international events. All our individual presentations for the project are available on our webpage. Here is a summary of some the most recent ones:

The ECMWF Annual Seminar on Earth System Reanalyses features CONFESS (Reading 4-8 September 2023)

Earth system reanalyses provide continuous historical records of the weather and climate, land surface, ocean, sea-ice and atmospheric composition, using billions of underlying observations. Reanalyses are very popular datasets and are used for a wide spectrum of applications. They are essential  for climate monitoring, research and applications.

The seminar provided a general overview of reanalysis activities around the world, embracing various domains and exploring pathways for future developments. The research of CONFESS was presented by Magdalena Alonso Balmaseda, who highlighted the importance of time-varying land properties and aerosols for the improved representation of climate trends and extremes in reanalyses and seasonal forecasts. Her presentation was on Wednesday the 6th of September (available here)

The seminar is part of ECMWF’s educational programme and was aimed at early career scientists as well as more established scientists who want to engage more with reanalysis.

CONFESS work is presented in the WCRP Open Science Conference in Kigali  23-27 October 2023.

WCRP held  its decadal Open Science Conference in Africa to further develop mutual understanding and explore opportunities and challenges of the continent.  This once-in-a-decade conference brought together the climate, environment, and related communities to discuss the latest developments in climate science and explore the transformative actions urgently needed to ensure a sustainable future. Taking place at a critical moment in Earth’s history, the outcome of all conference sessions culminated  with the “Kigali Declaration” a conference statement that was be submitted to the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28).

The CONFESS research was presented by Magdalena Alonso Balmaseda under the Theme “Advancing Climate Research“, in the session of Climate Predictability and Prediction. The presentation focused on the role of seasonal forecasts in a changing climate, and the importance of advancing the research to faithful represent the time variations of land properties and aerosols, a common challenge for Earth System Reanalysis, initialized predictions and climate simulation.

Several contributions from CONFESS in the AGU, December 2023. Please ask Retish and Constantin Ardilouze to provide some text and share their presentations

The AGU annual meeting is the premier meeting for Earth science that brings together thousands of researchers and fosters collaboration and knowledge sharing and identified as a valuable chance to bring the CONFESS work to the attention of a broader community. The session on “Subseasonal, Seasonal, and Longer-Timescale Predictability of Droughts/Floods and Land-Induced Forcing” that has been co-convened by Constantin Ardilouze, one of the WP Leads of CONFESS. Retish Senan gave an oral presentation on the impact of time varying vegetation and land use/land cover datasets developed in CONFESS on seasonal hindcasts and heat extremes in the session.