Acronym: CLIMFOR
Contract number: 18 SEE/30.06.2014
Funding: This project is funded by EEA Grants (European Economic Area Financial Mechanism)
and from the state budget.
Budget: 1,021,000 euro
Contract terms: 30.06.2014 to 30.04.2016
Contracting authority: Romanian Ministry of Education (MEN)
Contact Person of Contracting Authority
Daniela Dinica - MEN, Bucuresti, Gen. Berthelot 28-30, Sector 1, 010168, Phone 4056200;4056300
Contractor: Stefan Cel Mare University of Suceava
Contact person for Contractor:
Catalin Constantin ROIBU
catalinroibu [at] gmail.com
Str. Universitatii, 13, 720229 Suceava,
Phone: + 40 746 544 825
Project summary
The overall goal of the CLIMFOR project is to reconstruct the climate variability for Carpathian region for the past 1000 years and to predict forest response to climate changes.
In light of observations of climate changes over the past century, understanding the climate of the past millennium becomes increasingly important. This enables us placing the changes we witness today in a longer-term context, helping us deciphering both natural and anthropogenic forcing on the climate system.
In this context, the project "Forest response to climate change predicted from multicentury climate proxy-records in the Carpathian region" (CLIMFOR) will answer one of the most critical questions in climate research: does the magnitude and rate of the 20th century climate change exceed the natural variability in the Carpathian region? Building on this, the project will also answer a second question, of direct importance for future forest management in a changing climate: how did forests respond to past climatic changes of variable magnitude and frequency? As the instrumental records are limited to the past ca. 100 years, it is necessary to obtain paleoclimatic data from different sources, namely the so-called "proxies": tree rings (width, maximum density, stable isotopic composition of cellulose), perennial cave-ice accumulations (annual layer thickness, stable isotopic composition), lacustrine sediments (thickness of annual layers, embedded pollen etc).
Thus, within CLIMFOR, we will supply high-resolution climate reconstructions that capture 1) the magnitude and rate of change of climatic shifts and 2) the magnitude and frequency of extreme events over the last 1000 years. By integrating paleoclimatic data obtained through dendrochronological, climatological, isotopical, glaciological and sedimentological methods we aim to obtain, for the first time in Romania, a precise and complex view of the climatic changes in the Carpathian region during the late-Holocene and Anthropocene.
CLIMFOR will be the successor of a preliminary study, being the only one in Romania where all proxies have be studied, so that all members of the CLIMFOR research team have done previous studies and are familiar with challenges that might arise. This project will consolidate an existing research network in the field of paleoclimatology in Romania and will strengthen present co-operation between Romanian and donor countries and foreign research institutes. Thereby, competitiveness will be gained with respect of the newly launched EU program Horizon 2020.
