Facing the mitigation and adaptation challenges of ongoing climate change, PLUMES (Pathways linking uncertainties in model projections of climate and its effects) aimed towards a significantly improved treatment of key uncertainties in impacts, adaptation and vulnerability (IAV) analysis, with a focus on Finland and two sectors, crop production and human health. It did this by treating aspects of uncertainty within an evolving new framework of global scenarios described by the representative concentration pathways (RCPs) and shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). PLUMES provided:
- a new gridded daily time-step climate data set for Finland with explicit uncertainty estimates and analysis of climate trends;
- updated climate scenarios for Finland, put in the context of their predecessors but increased in scope and methods of presentation;
- narrative descriptions of alternative future socioeconomic and technological developments in Finland that are consistent with global SSP storylines;
- information on key sources of uncertainty in the modelling of climate change impacts on crop potential and on temperature-related human mortality;
- refinements of a mapping tool for depicting elements of the RCP/SSP scenarios for Finland, as well as potential impacts of these on crop production and on the vulnerability of the elderly to future changes in extreme weather; and
- access and guidance to new methods and tools for evaluating impact uncertainties and to the new scenarios.
Follow-up projects
PLUMES was completed in 2019. However, work on scenarios is proceeding in the FINSCAPES (2021-2024) project with application of scenarios in the related CHAMPS and Adapt-FIRST projects.
Research team and funding
PLUMES is co-ordinated at the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE).
Project team at SYKE: Timothy Carter (consortium leader), Stefan Fronzek (consortium manager), Mikael Hildén, Ismo Lahtinen, Kirsi Mäkinen and Nina Pirttioja.
Project team at the Natural Resource Institue Finland (Luke): Taru Palosuo (sub-project leader), Jukka Höhn, Reimund Rötter, Tapio Salo and Fulu Tao
Project team at the Finnish Meteorological Insitute (FMI): Kirsti Jylhä (sub-project leader), Juha Aalto, Otto Hyvärinen, Matti Kämäräinen, Mikko Laapas, Hanna Mäkelä, Pentti Pirinen, Kimmo Ruosteenoja and Reija Ruuhela
Funding for PLUMES is from the Academy of Finland: 989707 Euro (decision numbers 277276, 277403, 292836 and 278067).
International award for PLUMES research
The European Meteorological Society presented PLUMES researcher Juha Aalto from the Finnish Meteorological Institute with its Young Scientist Award 2017 for his paper on a new gridded climate dataset for Finland (Aalto et al. 2016, doi:10.1002/2015JD024651).
Project publications
PLUMES publications list (23 August 2019)
Seminars and workshops organized in the PLUMES project
27.8.2015: Seminar "New gridded climate dataset in Finland" (agenda and presentations)
13.6.2017: PLUMES Research Seminar “Socioeconomic Scenarios for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Research in Finland” (agenda)
17.5.2018: Workshop “Finnish agriculture and food sector development under different global scenarios“
14.5.2019: Workshop "Climate change and the social and health sector in Finland - scenarios to support research and decision-making" (info sheet health SSPs based on the workshop results)
Contact information
Professor Timothy Carter, Climate Change Research Programme, Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), firstname.surname@ymparisto.fi