Global Change Research Centre AS CR, v.v.i.

The aim of the project called CzechGlobe, which falls within the cognizance of the Ministry of Education and which will be financed from the Operational Programme for Research and Development for Innovation, is to help both the Czech Republic and Europe prepare for the changes that have been gradually happening due to the consequences resulting from the Global Climate Change impacts. "Our long-term measurements show that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is clearly and explicitly growing. The concentration changed in the past as well, but lately the growth of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been of an exponential nature. As a result, today and everyday significant changes have been happening not only in Antarctica or Greenland, but in our Central Europe as well.
These changes in Europe, in terms of the media, are not as visually impressive as a piece of a collapsing glacier.
However, this does not mean that we can ignore them. On the contrary. They are responsible, for instance, for more and more frequent climatic extremes that affect us fundamentally.
We all know that floods in the Czech Republic have always been here, but if we have got a cent-year's flood three times over the period of twenty years, we can feel and perceive that the frequency of climate extremes is increasing. It is our duty, if we really want to be good protectors of our country, to get ready for these changes", said the CzechGlobe project director, professor Michal Marek.
Professor Marek's first task will be to build the necessary infrastructure in the Czech Republic. "Of course, we are not starting from scratch. In our research we are going to build on the significant work we have done in the European research community", states Marek. For example, professor Marek´s team have been participating in European projects investigating the carbon cycle for 20 years already.
"When constructing the CzechGlobe infrastructure we are going to utilize the fact that our workplaces are part of the network of ESFRI (the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures), especially the part of the integrated system for carbon observation (ICOS) and Airborne Remote Sensing of the Earth (EUFAR)," said professor Marek.
The CzechGlobe research team itself will count about 150 research-scientific workers. "I expect more than a third of my team will consist of experienced scientists and almost half of the team will be constituted of young scientists and doctoral students," says Marek. The Czech research team will work closely with foreign scientific centers, such as the Research Centre Jülich belonging to the Helmholtz Association, University of Zurich or the Department of Agro-environmental and Forest Biology and the National Research Institute in Rome.
"Many other companies are already interested in the results coming from our research, it is NASA or Meteo France, among others", says professor Michal Marek, director of the research project CzechGlobe, in conclusion.