For a long time, the only available products to inform decision-makers on future climate-related risks were projections: century-scale climate change simulations initialized from arbitrary model states to which were applied anthropogenic and natural forcings. A major limitation of climate projections is their limited information regarding the current state of the Earth’s climate system. Decadal climate predictions, obtained by constraining the initial conditions of an ensemble of model simulations through a best estimate of the observed climate state, provide a better understanding of climate fluctuations in the near-term range (typically up to ten years) and thus an invaluable tool in assisting climate adaptation.

The first objective of this presentation is to illustrate the results obtained from the CMIP6 DCPP-A decadal retrospective predictions produced with the operational Cmcc decadal prediction system (Cmcc Dps), based on the fully-coupled Cmcc-CM2-SR5 dynamical model.

Furthermore, the speaker will present and discuss the predicted near-term climatic anomalies in the Mediterranean region, one of the most sensitive to climate change. This region has undergone an intense warming and drying trend during the last decades, dominantly caused by the increase of anthropogenic greenhouse gases concentrations. Using the Cmcc Dps and the respective ensemble of non-initialized projections, we assess future climate changes focusing on both the annual mean and seasonal responses.