Innovaties in de afzonderlijke transportmodaliteiten en in synchromodaal vervoer bieden mogelijkheden om transport efficiënt, flexibel, betrouwbaar en duurzaam te organiseren en daarmee in te spelen op de (individuele) wensen van de klant en specifieke netwerkomstandigheden (groot onderhoud, verstoringen). Deze innovaties leiden tot een verbetering van de concurrentiepositie van Nederland. Voordat innovatieve maatregelen geïmplementeerd worden is het nodig bewustwording te creëren, inzicht te bieden in effecten en draagvlak bij betrokken marktpartijen voor o.a. de benodigde samenwerking te creëren. Het doel van dit project is het identificeren van de (combinaties van) maatregelen voor verbetering van efficiëntie, betrouwbaarheid, flexibiliteit en duurzaamheid van logistieke ketens die het meest effectief zijn en het creëren van draagvlak bij betrokken partijen die de maatregel(en) met elkaar moeten implementeren. Hiertoe wordt onderzoek gedaan naar synchromodale planningsalgoritmes, zo mogelijk in real-time, data-driven simulaties, en serious games voor samenwerking en situational awareness waarmee de maatregelen ontworpen en getest kunnen worden. Het belangrijkste resultaat van het project is dat partijen betere en gedragen (unimodele, multimodale of synchromodale) oplossingen kiezen doordat in een theoretische omgeving reeds geëxperimenteerd is met maatregelen en deze door de (markt)¬partijen uitvoerig zijn besproken en bijgesteld. In dit project wordt niet alleen een vervolg gegeven aan de innovatie-community van samenwerkende marktpartijen en overheden die in het IDVV project rond het verbeteren van de binnenvaartketen is ontstaan, maar wordt tevens een impuls gegeven aan de innovatie-community rond de spoorgoederentafel en zal de innovatie-community rond synchromodaal vervoer (die er nu nog niet echt is) mede worden vormgegeven.

Extreme heat waves and heavy rainfall are increasing in intensity on a global scale, trends which will continue with future global warming. Summer, with most biological and agricultural production, is probably the season when changes in extremes will have the most-severe impacts on humanity. Summer extremes are particularly devastating when they persist for several days: Many consecutive hot-and-dry days causing harvest failure, or stagnating wet extremes causing flooding. Despite this importance, persistence of extreme summer weather has largely been neglected by the climate science community. What maintains stagnating summer weather? Do climate models capture persistence and the underlying processes accurately? What is the role of global warming? Persistence is linked to sea-surface temperature, soil moisture and atmospheric circulation which are expected to change with future warming but the uncertainties are large. The proposed research fills this knowledge gap. I will study mid-latitude summer circulation and its influence on weather persistence focusing on the most high-impact, persistent summer extremes. The project innovatively combines novel methods from disciplines which historically evolved largely independently: (1) Machine learning guided by physical theory and (2) climate modeling experiments using state-of-the-art global Numerical Weather Prediction models. I will quantify persistence of summer extremes and their local and remote drivers in past, present and future climates, focusing on Western Europe and eastern U.S., i.e. two major population centers critical for global food production. In recent publications, I have reported a pronounced weakening of boreal summer circulation since 1979 and hypothesized that this leads to more-persistent, and therefore more-extreme, summer weather conditions. This overarching hypothesis will be tested, using the described methods, in observations and modeled data at different warming levels. This work will reduce societal risks from future summer extremes by improving existing forecasts and developing novel early warning systems based upon optimal empirical prediction methods.

An estimated 60% of the presently observed sea level rise is attributed to melting glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets. The contribution of Arctic glaciers and especially the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) has more than doubled over the period 1961-2008, and is likely to increase further when global temperature increases over the coming century. A first order effect of increasing temperatures on the glacier mass budget is an increase in surface melt. However, not all melt contributes to mass loss via runoff, because part of the meltwater refreezes in the cold snow. For the GrIS, an estimated 30-50% of all meltwater refreezes. Infiltration of water and subsequent refreezing is not well included in existing mass balance models, and estimates of refreezing are not well validated due to a lack of observations. Given the importance of refreezing for the mass budget of Arctic glaciers, in this proposal we focus on improving refreezing estimates for the GrIS and therewith other Arctic ice masses, by using a combined observational and modelling approach. Existing satellite and in-situ observations, complemented with detailed snow temperature observations to be carried out in western Greenland (K-transect), will be used to evaluate the mass balance terms and refreezing modelled with the regional climate model RACMO2, which includes a multi-layer snow model. After improvements to the snow model have been implemented and evaluated, RACMO2 will be run for the period 1958-present-2100 in order to study the role of refreezing in the mass balance of the GrIS in a changing climate.

North-Atlantic and Indian Ocean climate variability appears to be tightly related. The observed increase of the amplitude of the North-Atlantic Oscillation (stronger westerlies) over the past decades is directly related to increased atmospheric convection in response to a warming Indian Ocean. Warm Indian Ocean waters flow into the South Atlantic and further northward as part of the global overturning circulation. Paleoceanographic records indicate that this inter-ocean connection around South Africa fluctuated considerably and abruptly in during (inter)glacial change, as southward transport was the only oceanic pathway for the Indian Ocean to dispose of its excess heat. On millennial time-scales that could explain why warming over the North Atlantic coincided with cooling of the Antarctic sector and vice versa. Observations and modeling suggest an important impact of the Indian-Atlantic inter-ocean connection on the strength and stability of the Atlantic overturning circulation, controlled by the (sub)tropical flows feeding it from upstream. These flows converge in the Mozambique Channel and the southern East Madagascar Current (EMC). North Atlantic and Antarctic cold water masses flow in opposite direction in the deep Indian Ocean. To understand their dynamics, an array of moored instruments will measure interannual variability across the Mozambique Channel and remain in operation for several years. A second array will be placed across the EMC. Combined with satellite data and high-resolution ocean-model simulations a complete picture should emerge of the varying flow in the western Indian Ocean presently feeding into the Indian-Atlantic Ocean connection. Further simulations will be executed under both present and glacial conditions, and assessed against new paleorecords of western Indian Ocean climate change over the past 60,000 years from sediment cores. Finally, simulations with the global climate model EC-EARTH will address the processes controlling the global atmospheric and oceanic (tele)connections between the Indian and Atlantic ocean-climate systems, particularly during abrupt North Atlantic climate change.

Increased use of the subsurface, for example for geothermal energy production or subsurface storage, is crucial for achieving the (inter)national goals for greenhouse gas emissions. EPOS-eNLarge creates the research capabilities for the scientific breakthroughs urgently needed for efficient and safe use of our subsurface. For this, EPOS-eNLarge provides the missing link needed to apply our understanding of micro-processes in the subsurface at the kilometer-scale where subsurface operations (and the effects of these) take place. EPOS-eNLarge further ensures that unique research data of the Dutch subsurface is made openly, and centrally accessible for future re-use, alongside other European data.