17–18 Mar 2026
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique
Europe/Brussels timezone

National climate scenarios for Belgium

17 Mar 2026, 16:00
15m
Oral presentation Effective climate services for better decisions Effective climate services for better decisions

Speaker

Inne Vanderkelen (KU Leuven, Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium)

Description

Developing national climate scenarios allows for a consistent translation of global and regional climate projections into information relevant for impact modelling and decision-making within Belgium. We present a new set of national climate scenarios developed within the CORDEX.be II project, based on kilometer-scale regional climate model (RCM) simulations. The ensemble includes three RCMs (ALARO, MAR, and COSMO-CLM) that simulate the present-day climate and two 20-year future periods representing global warming levels of +2°C and +3°C. The downscaling specifically targets the representation of climate extremes, including heatwaves and heavy precipitation events. Boundary conditions are derived from global climate models from the 6th phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), that perform well in reproducing these extremes. The performance of the three models is evaluated through an analysis of their ability to simulate key climate variables for the present-day period . The resulting scenarios provide a robust basis for assessing climate impacts across multiple sectors, including agriculture, health, and water management, and for supporting adaptation planning to future climate extremes in Belgium.

If your abstract is not accepted for an oral presentation, would you be interested in presenting it as a poster instead? Yes
If accepted by the Scientific Board, I agree to have my presentation/poster and abstract published on the Belgian Climate Centre websites and social media. Yes

Primary author

Inne Vanderkelen (KU Leuven, Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium)

Co-authors

Prof. Bert Van Schaeybroeck Fien Serras Josip Brajkovic (ULiège) Kobe Vandelanotte (Royal meteorological institute of Belgium) Nicolas Ghilain (Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium) Nicole van Lipzig (KU Leuven) Prof. Piet Termonia (Royal Meteorological Institute) Steven Caluwaerts Xavier Fettweis (Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, Université de Liège)

Presentation materials