In the past years Europe has been hit by devastating extreme events. COMPASS will unravel the attribution of climate change to the changing impacts of those extremes. Hereto the project implements a climate attribution modelling framework that will be optimized with the learnings from a set of use-cases. I expect that the project will contribute to raising societal awareness by considering the complex interplay between multiple hazards and by also identifying the underlying socio-economic drivers of the impact severity.

COMPASS aims to develop novel methods to bridge the gap from attribution of univariate extremes to attribution of complex extremes, as well as from hazard-centred analysis to an impact-centred perspective. We will demonstrate the applicability of the COMPASS tools in a set of use cases, covering different regions and hazards, focusing on various compound extremes, including combinations of flooding and storms, heatwaves and drought, tropical cyclones. We aspire to lay the methodological foundation and an operational protocol, on which an operational service as part of the Copernicus Climate Change Services could be built.

COMPASS has a strong focus on user engagement. By involving local stakeholders to help define relevant impact pathways and storylines of future vulnerability and exposure, we aim to increase our impact on the use cases and boost uptake of results. By presenting our work not only to the scientific audience, but also to practitioners, civil protection services and policy-makers we attempt to prove benefits for the larger society. To maximise our impact, a wide portfolio of dissemination and exploitation activities have been planned, tailored to the interest and level of expertise of each audience.

Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) operationally provides up-to-date quality information about our changing climate to its diverse set of users. C3S heavily rely on the research done within Academia and National Met services especially through the Copernicus evolution calls. One of the novelties of C3S in 2024 is the climate attribution function. We very much look forward to COMPASS’ outputs to design the future evolution of this component of the programme.