The European Climate Research Alliance (ECRA) aims to strengthen, expand and optimise EU climate research capabilities through the sharing of world-class national facilities in Europe and the collaborative realisation of pan-EU programmes. National and European Climate change research programmes have to be streamlined and coordinated, in order to ensure optimum use of human resources, modelling capacities, field activities, and infrastructures, maximising therefore the impact of scientific results and reinforcing the European Research Area for climate change science.

Key objectives of ECRA

The high-level objectives of the Alliance are to:

• Accelerate the development of climate change research by conceiving and implementing Collaborative Programmes of research, combining capacities of research institutions and maximising complementarities and synergies, including collaboration with international partners.
• Work towards a long term, durable integration of excellent but dispersed research capacities across Europe, optimising the use of resources, building additional research capacity and developing a comprehensive range of pan-European research infrastructures.
• Strengthen Europe’s capacity to initiate and execute large fundamental and comprehensive research and development programmes in climate science.
• Develop training, education and outreach activities, encouraging researcher mobility and providing a training environment for PhD students and other scientists in strategic climate sectors.
• Develop links and sustained partnerships with industry to strengthen the interplay between research outcomes and innovation and to foster the early take-up of promising results.
• Provide advice to policy and public in respect to climate change.