About | Decadal Climate Predictions

Traditionally, climate-sensitive decision-making has depended on two primary sources of information: seasonal forecasts and long-term climate projections. Seasonal forecasts typically provide guidance for short periods ranging from one to eighteen months ahead, helping sectors like agriculture and energy prepare for near-term conditions. On the other hand, climate projections span much longer timescales—stretching from the early 20th century to the end of this century or beyond—and are crucial for long-range planning. However, these two types of forecasts leave a critical gap. Seasonal outlooks are too short for strategic initiatives, while climate projections do not incorporate the internal variability of the current climate system, making them less useful for medium-term planning.

Decadal climate predictions are emerging as a powerful tool to bridge this timescale gap, align ingclosely with real-world planning needs in sectors such as energy, agriculture, water resources, and infrastructure. Targeting the one- to ten-year horizon, they offer scientifically grounded insights that are increasingly relevant to users whose planning needs fall between the seasonal and centennial outlooks.

At the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), we are pioneering this field by producing state-of-the-art decadal forecasts that are directly informed by current climate conditions, giving stakeholders more actionable, realistic guidance for the years ahead.

Who we are

The Department of Earth Sciences of the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación is one of the most active groups in climate prediction and climate services in Europe. Comprising over 240 people structured in five specialized research groups, the department focuses on advancing environmental forecasting, with a particular focus on the atmosphere-ocean-biosphere system.

Its mission encompasses the development and use of state-of-the-art Earth System models and data-driven applications, supporting cutting-edge high-performance computing and big data infrastructures. In addition to its core research activities, the department actively manages and transfers technology to address key societal challenges and real-time air quality and climate information based on its research expertise in collaboration with Spanish authorities and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

The decadal climate predictions presented here are the result of a strong collaborative effort among three of the departmental research groups: the Climate Variability and Change group, the Earth System Services group and the Computational Earth Sciences group.

Climate Variability and Change

The Climate Variability and Change (CVC) group conducts foundational research to understand climate variability and improving its predictability, including for extremes and biogeochemical processes, while assessing the effectiveness of carbon removal technologies. We develop and apply advanced Earth System modeling capabilities, with a particular emphasis on EC-Earth3, our primary tool for climate prediction. EC-Earth3 underpins the contributions to the operational forecasts for the WMO Lead Centre for Annual-to-Decadal Climate Prediction, as well as broader CMIP6 activities including HighResMIP, C4MIP, OMIP, historical simulations, and future scenarios.

Earth System Services

The Earth System Service group facilitates the interpretation and application of research coming from the BSC-ES. The group also carries out applied research to demonstrate the ongoing value of these services to advance sustainable development in key sectors of society and economy such as renewable energy, urban development, insurance, agriculture, water management or health. The Earth System Services group aims at developing tailored services on weather and atmospheric composition model simulations (focusing on short-term time scales) and climate predictions (focusing on the sub-seasonal, seasonal and decadal timescales).

Computational Earth Sciences

The Computational Earth Sciences group is a multidisciplinary group with members of different technical and scientific profiles, that interacts closely with the other groups of the Department. The group provides help and guidance on the technical aspects of the scientists’ work and develops frameworks to ensure an efficient use of high-performance computing resources, including tailored workflows for climate prediction applications.

Acknowledgements

The decadal climate prediction website has been developed as part of the CLINSA project (CGL2017-85791-R), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO). In addition, the work supporting the production of to these predictions has been funded by the EU via the HE Framework Programme under grant agreements 101081460 (ASPECT) and 101081555 (Impetus4Change).