A national system for the collection, preservation, accessibility, and dissemination of environmental and climate data in mountain and marine areas.
Mountain regions are sentinels of climate and environmental change, and many marine regions hold rich information on past climate. The NextData project aims to facilitate the implementation of measurement networks in remote mountain and marine areas and develop efficient portals for accessing meteorological and climate data, atmospheric composition data, paleoclimate information provided by mountain glacier cores and marine and lake sediments, biodiversity and hydrological cycle measurements, marine reanalyses, and climate model projections.
New data on climate variability over recent centuries and future projections will be made available for the Alps, the Himalaya-Karakoram region, the Mediterranean region, and other regions of interest. Pilot studies conducted during the project will enable quantitative estimates of water resource availability and the effects of atmospheric aerosols on mountain environments, as well as assessments of the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, health, and society in high-altitude regions. The archive system and scientific results produced by NextData will constitute a unique and irreplaceable database for research, environmental protection applications, and climate change impact assessments. This database will support decision makers in defining knowledge-based environmental and climate policies and developing adaptation strategies.
The NextData Project has three Grand Challenges:
1) Building a system of archives and portals for the distribution of climate and environmental data from mountain regions;
2) Reconstructing Italy's climate over the past millennia, with a particular focus on the last century;
3) Producing a set of high-resolution disaggregations (downscaling) of climate scenarios for Italy over the coming decades.
Scientific coordinator: Antonello Provenzale, CNR-IGG