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CLIPC: Constructing Europe's Climate Information Portal

CLIPC provides access to Europe's climate data and information.

Use the climate impact indicator toolkit

The climate impactclimate impact
See Impact Assessment
indicator toolToolkit V2 previewkit is based on a mapviewer with an OpenStreetMap base map of Europe. Climate impact indicators and climate datasets produced in CLIPC can be selected and viewed as overlays on top of the base map. The toolkit is aimed to be used by impact researchers and consultations in climate adaptationadaptation
The process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects. In human systems, adaptation seeks to moderate harm or exploit beneficial opportunities. In natural systems, human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate and its effects.

The toolkit allows the user to view and explore climate changeclimate change
Climate change refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings such as modulations of the solar cycles, volcanic eruptions and persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use. Note that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in its Article 1, defines climate change as: 'a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods'. The UNFCCC thus makes a distinction between climate change attributable to human activities altering the atmospheric composition, and climate variability attributa
impact indicators calculated for different climate change and socio-economic scenarios. It provides tools to analyse the available (meta)data and uncertaintyuncertainty
Lack of precision or unpredictability of the exact value at a given moment in time. It does not usually imply lack of knowledge. Often, the future state of a process may not be predictable, such as a roll with dice, but the probability of finding it in a certain state may be well known (the probability of rolling a six is 1/6, and flipping tails with a coin is 1/2). In climate science, the dice may be loaded, and we may refer to uncertainties even with perfect knowledge of the odds. Uncertainties can be modelled statistically in terms of pdfs, extreme value theory and stochastic time series models.
and to switch between different indicators and different climate change and socio-economic scenariosscenarios
Scenarios can be thought of as stories of possible futures. They allow the description of factors that are difficult to quantify. In the context of climate change scenarios are used for the future development of factors such as governance, social structures, future population growth, technical development and agriculture. These descriptions are essential to model the future climate.
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Available dataset for the climate (impact) indicators can be selected and moved to the "active" tab. The left side bar offer basic functions and allows the user to zoom in and out, select base layers, add additional layers, open a help function, go back to the homepage, download and save and share your selection.

Compare and combine

You can compare the selected datasets (select and press top right button) via a map view, or compare the metadatametadata
Information about meteorological and climatological data concerning how and when they were measured, their quality, known problems and other characteristics.
. Direct access to compare function.
As a second option you can "combine" datasets into a third dataset. You can add up climate impacts, or e.g. create a difference map. Direct acccess to combine function.

Please visit the current version of the toolkit and provide us your feedback via the contact form.

Use Cases

A number of use cases has been developed to demonstrate how the functionalities of the CLIPC Impacts Indicator Toolbox can be used to identify, select, compare, combine and rank indicators, for applications in research or decision-support support in policy and practice situations. These cases are simplified, stylized descriptions of technical steps to be taken in the portal. They do not represent real-world examples of scientific analysis or assessment, for which not only other indicators may be required but which also requires more in-depth analyses and interpretation of results by experts. Go here to the use cases.

Please have a look at our instruction videos before you start to work in the mapviewer, or start to work with compare and combine functions.

   
Map Viewer   Compare   Combine