Project Title:
Modelling Sequential Biosphere Systems Under
Climate Change for Radioactive Waste Disposal
Project Acronym: BIOCLIM
Project Ref: FIKW-CT-2000-00024
Project Start Date: 2000-10-01
Project End Date: 2003-12-31
Project Duration: 39 months
Project Status: Completed
Objective:
To provide a scientific basis and practical methodology for assessing the
potential impacts of long-term climate change on biosphere characteristics in
the context of radiological performance assessments of radioactive waste
repositories in deep geological formations. This was achieved through five
technical work packages as follows:
Work Package 1 - examined and summarised the issues that have to be
addressed by the waste management agencies and the regulator represented
in the consortium when considering climate change impacts on repository
safety. The methods that had been used up to the start of BIOCLIM to
represent environmental change in repository performance/safety
assessments plus the available palaeological information for the European
regions of interest were summarised. The work was documented in
Deliverables 1 and 2.
Work Packages 2 and 3 - developed two innovative and complementary
strategies for representing time series of long term climate change using
different methods to analyse specific discrete climate conditions (the
hierarchical strategy) and a continuous climate simulation over the next two
hundred thousand years (the integrated strategy).
Three different
downscaling methods were developed and applied to derive regional climate
characteristics for the European regions of interest.
The work was
documented in Deliverables 3, 4+5, 6A, 6B, 7+9, 8A and 8B.
Work Package 4 - explored and evaluated the potential effects of climate
change on the nature of biosphere systems and how such changes and
climate transitions could be represented in radiological biosphere
assessments. The methodology is documented in Deliverable 10-12.
Work Package 5 - disseminated information and the results obtained from the
project for further use through organisation of a final seminar that was open to
the international scientific community and maintenance of a project web site
(http://www.andra.fr/bioclim) on which all project deliverables and the climate
model data generated during the project are publicly available.
Main Results
1. BIOCLIM has delivered a comprehensive methodology for incorporating
climate-driven environmental change into the biosphere component of
performance assessments. Climate states/classes and transitions provide
an appropriate framework for developing structured descriptions of
environmental change for such assessments. The IAEA BIOMASS
Reference Biosphere methodology was found to be appropriate for
characterising biosphere states and this methodology was developed and
augmented to provide a methodology for dealing with climate transitions.
2. Climate modelling has included innovative new developments in Earth
Models of Intermediate Complexity (EMICs) including the coupling of subcomponents to represent atmosphere, ocean and ice sheet dynamics.
3. Applications of a hierarchy of climate models used in a ‘cascade mode’ to
obtain global to regional data on climate and vegetation changes for
various time slices over very long time scales were demonstrated.
4. Three different downscaling techniques were developed to derive regional
climate information from data originally derived on larger scales.
5. The project has provided a substantial body of climatic modelling results
for large areas of Europe – these represent an important resource for
national organisations wanting to include future climate change in
performance assessments. Additionally, palaeological data have been
collated and documented for regions in France, England, Spain and the
Czech Republic.
Contact Details
Contact Name: Dr Delphine TEXIER (Project Co-ordinator)
Contact Organisation: ANDRA, France
E-mail: Delphine.Texier@andra.fr
Organisations Represented in the BIOCLIM Consortium
Agence Nationale pour la Gestion des Nuclear Research Institute Rez, plc Déchets Radioactifs (ANDRA), France Ustav jaderneho vyzkumu Rez. (NRI),
Czech Republic
Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique / The Environment Agency of England
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et and Wales (EA), UK
de
l’Environnement
(CEA/LSCE),
France
Centro
de
Investigaciones Université Catholique de Louvain/
Energeticas,
Medioambientales
y Institut
d’Astronomie
et
de
Tecnologicas (CIEMAT), Spain
Géophysique
Georges
Lemaître
(UCL/ASTR), Belgium
Empresa Nacional de Residuos University of East Anglia (UEA), UK
Radioactivos S.A. (ENRESA), Spain
ENVIROS Consulting Ltd, UK
Gesellschaft
für
Reaktorsicherheit
Germany
United
Kingdom
Nirex
Limited
(NIREX), UK (and Mike Thorne and
Associates Ltd, subcontractor to Nirex)
Anlagen
und Universidad Politecnica de Madrid
mbH
(GRS), Escuela
Tecnica
Superior
de
Ingenieros de Minas (UPM-ETSIMM),
Spain