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The forecast quality of multi-model seasonal-to-decadal climate predictions, as measured by metrics of, among others, accuracy and reliability, has been traditionally estimated considering time-average products and products for event thresholds that do not target the occurrence of unusual events of either monthly or seasonal duration. However, there is an increasing interest in some user communities for products that represent extreme and unusual events. This presentation will discuss the differences in forecast quality between traditional forecast products, like mean seasonal temperature, and products for intraseasonal extremes (e.g., those measured with the 95th percentile of high-frequency temperature over periods like a month or a season) and monthly and seasonal unusual events (such as the frequency of exceeding the 90th percentile of the daily climatological distribution of temperature at a given time of the year). The results will be discussed in the context of their implications to address a number of user requirements from different sectors. The relevance of the forecast quality estimated from hindcast sets and the role of the observational uncertainty will be discussed when delivering forecast products in a climate service context. The implications of this work for the standardisation of climate services based on climate predictions will also be discussed.

El Departament de Química de la UAB en col·laboració amb l'ICN2 han desenvolupat un nou tipus de finestres intel·ligents de baix cost i fàcil fabricació basades en recobriments polimèrics que contenen nanopartícules de ceres orgàniques. Així, a temperatures ambient baixes o amb poca irradiació solar la finestra és transparent i a temperatures altes o en dies assolellats es torna opaca. El Departamento de Química de la UAB en colaboración con el ICN2 han desarrollado un nuevo tipo de ventanas inteligentes de bajo coste y fácil fabricación basadas en recubrimientos poliméricos que contienen nanopartículas de ceras orgánicas. Así, a temperaturas ambiente bajas o con poca irradiación solar la ventana es transparente y a temperaturas altas o en días soleados se tornan opacas. The Department of Chemistry of the UAB in collaboration with the ICN2 have developed a new class of smart windows of low cost and facile fabrication based on polymeric coatings loaded with organic wax nanoparticles. Thus, at low ambient temperatures or with little solar radiation, the window is transparent and at high temperatures or on sunny days it turns opaque.

Off/on, on/off, and on/on fluorescence switching systems find application in a variety of areas, for each of which a particular dye or dye-switch tether must be specifically designed and synthesized. Herein it is demonstrated that such tight requirement can be avoided by using easily prepared mixtures of readily available emitters and phase change materials (PCMs). By proper selection of the PCM and, if needed, additives, thermo- and photothermoresponsive materials showing all classes of emission switching modes can be prepared from a single dye and without chemical modifications. This strategy can be generalized to distinct emitters and, thanks to the facile and versatile printability of dye–PCM mixtures, it can be used for the fabrication of fluorescent patterns showing complex (photo)thermal responses with direct applicability in sensing and anti-counterfeiting., This work was supported by grant RTI2018-098027-B-C21 and PID2019-106171RB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by ERDF – “A way of making Europe”. The ICN2 is funded by the CERCA program/Generalitat de Catalunya and supported by the Severo Ochoa “Centers of Excellence” program, grant SEV-2017-0706 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. U.A.B. thanks the support from Generalitat de Catalunya (2017 SGR00465 project). J.R.O. thanks the Generalitat de Catalunya (AGAUR) for his predoctoral FI fellowship.

Thanks to the recent advances in climate modelling, seasonal predictions are becoming more skilful at anticipating the future state of near-surface climate variables over extratropics. Nevertheless, such predictions are delivered on too coarse grids with horizontal resolutions of hundreds of kilometres so that local events happening at much finer scales cannot be reproduced. This is particularly noted for variables with high spatial variability like wind or precipitation: wind speeds can vary substantially over a few kilometres, from the top of a mountain to a valley floor. The differences in magnitude might be relevant for the deriving sectoral indicators, for example, within the wind industry and at a wind farm level.This work presents and applies a downscaling methodology to generate fine-scale seasonal forecasts ---up to station scale--- for near-surface wind speeds in Europe. The hybrid forecasts are based on a statistical downscaling with a perfect prognosis approach, fitting a multi-linear regression with the four main Euro-Atlantic Teleconnections (EATC) indices as predictors. Seasonal predictions of EATC indices, which are predictable with relatively good skill levels, are later inserted into the multi-linear model. This results in skilful seasonal predictions of surface wind speeds. Indeed, the comparison of the hybrid forecasts against the dynamical forecasts of wind speed shows that the skill of such forecasts is not only maintained but also increased over most of Europe. The hybrid forecasts are generated at 17 locations where tall tower wind speed data are available and at a pan-European scale using the 100-metre wind speeds from the ERA5 reanalysis. Improving the accuracy of seasonal predictions is an essential step to inform weather-and-climate-vulnerable socio-economic sectors of seasonal anomalies a few months ahead.

Even though thermofluorochromic materials are eternal candidates for their use in multiple applications, they are still limited as they require complex synthetic strategies to accomplish tunable optical properties and/or provide optical changes only over a very wide temperature range. By taking advantage of the high sensitivity of the optical properties of conjugated polymers and oligomers to the external environment, herein phase change material (PCM)-based thermofluorochromic mixtures are created, where the solid-to-liquid transition of the PCM host triggers a sharp fluorescence color change of the dispersed polymers/oligomers. Fluorophore conjugation length, concentration, and PCM nature can be used to vary the spectral properties of the resulting materials along the visible region, covering a large part of the CIE 1931 color space. For the preparation of functional devices, this behavior can be directly transferred to the solid state by soaking or printing cellulose papers with the obtained thermofluorochromic mixtures as well as by structuring them into solid lipid particles that can be dispersed within polymer matrices. The resulting materials show very promising features as thermal sensors and anticounterfeiting labels., This work was supported by Grant Nos. RTI2018-098027-B-C21 and PID2019-106171RB-100 funded by No. MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by ERDF A way of making Europe. The ICN2 is funded by the CERCA programme/Generalitat de Catalunya. The ICN2 is supported by the Severo Ochoa Centres of Excellence programme, Grant No. SEV-2017-0706 funded by No. MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. This work was also supported by Generalitat de Catalunya (No. 2017 SGR00465 project). J.R.O. aknowledge the Generalitat de Catalunya (AGAUR) for his predoctoral FI fellowship.

Solid molecular materials modulating their luminescent properties upon irradiation are typically based on photochromic dyes. Despite these are potentially interesting for applications such as anticounterfeiting, bioimaging, optical data storage, and writable/erasable devices, key features are preventing their use in marketable products: the lack of straightforward strategies to obtain near infrared (NIR) radiation‐responding photochromic dyes and the dramatic response modification these molecules suffer in solids. Herein a photochrome‐free approach is reported to achieve solid materials whose luminescence modulation is induced by NIR radiation. This strategy is based on the capacity of phase change materials (PCMs) to modify the emission properties of fluorescent dyes upon photothermally induced interconversion between their solid and liquid states. The preparation of several NIR‐responsive thermofluorochromic materials of high fatigue resistance and nondestructive readout is illustrated and this approach is extended to different commercially available dyes, taking advantage of distinct fluorescence modulation mechanisms, providing, thus, color tunability. The modulation response is straightforwardly tuned by simply varying the irradiation power density, the gold nanoshell concentration, and/or the PCM type. This tunability allows to accomplish NIR‐activated multistate thermofluorochromic materials and fast/slow/irreversible responses in NIR‐writings/drawings of good spatial resolution, which can be of interest for barcodings, anticounterfeiting technologies and (re)writable devices., This work was supported by the Spanish Research Agency and European Regional Development Funds (PID2019‐106171RB‐I00 and RTI2018‐098027‐B‐C21 projects) and Generalitat de Catalunya (2017 SGR00465 project). ICN2 was funded by the Centres de Recerca de Catalunya (CERCA) programme (Generalitat de Catalunya) and acknowledges support from the Severo Ochoa programme (AEI, SEV‐2017‐0706). J.R.O. thanks to Agencia de Gestión de Ayudas Universitarias y de Investigación (AGAUR) for his predoctoral FI fellowship.

Color-tunable white-light-emitting materials are currently attracting much attention because of their potential applications in artificial lighting, sensing, and imaging. However, preparation of these systems from organic emitters is often cumbersome due to the interchromophoric interactions occurring upon solvent drying in the final solid materials, which can be hardly predicted and may lead to detrimental effects. To circumvent these obstacles, we have developed a new fabrication methodology that relies on dye encapsulation within liquid-filled capsules, thus enabling direct transfer of the luminescent properties from solution to the solid state and as such, rational design of miniaturized white-light-emitting materials. By introducing a thermally responsive chromophore into the capsules, these materials are further endowed with color tunability, which does not only allow ample modulation of the emitted color but also facilitate external fine control of the system so as to ensure precise realization of white light at the desired temperature and excitation wavelength., N.A.V.-M. and J.R.O. thank the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (MICINN) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (AGAUR) for their predoctoral FPU and FI fellowships, respectively. ICN2 acknowledges support from the Severo Ochoa Program (MINECO, SEV-2017-0706) and the CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya.

The project "Integrated approach for the development across Europe of user oriented climate indicators for GFCS high-priority sectors: agriculture, disaster risk reduction, energy, health, water and tourism", INDECIS, has as a core part of its development a Work Package dedicated to the improvement of quality control and homogenization techniques based on benchmarking approaches. INDECIS is working in the improvement of quality control (QC) and homogenization techniques at the daily scale for the variables contained in the European Climat Assessment and Dataset (ECA&D). In particular, the project is using two test regions (Slovenia and South Sweden), which contain high density and quality data suitable for benchmarking purposes. The benchmarking process will be conducted following the usual steps: creation of the homogeneous worlds, introduction of quality control problems/inhomogeneities, application of quality control and homogenization approaches and validations of the results. The creation of the homogeneous worlds is done using Regional Climate Models and Reanalysis Data to extract the long-term signals. The introduction of quality control problems and inhomogeneities is approached studying the selected regions of the ECA&D dataset: first, the frequency of QC issues and breakpoints will mimic the frequency of such problems encountered in the current operational procedures of the ECA&D dataset. The shape of the inhomogeneities, which represents a serious drawback to the attempts of benchmarking at the daily resolution, is resolved using parallel measurements, both obtained from other datasets (e.g. ISTI-POST) or created by swapping segments of neighboring stations. The application of available techniques is centralized with the ProClimDB software, plus other stand-alone codes. Finally, a battery of validation measures will be applied to identify the most suitable approaches for each variable. The last step will be an analysis of the uncertainty introduced by the homogenization procedures. INDECIS' work on homogenization is intended to be finalized by the end of 2018. In this contribution, we concentrate on the description of the processes involved in the creation of the homogeneous worlds and their corruption for benchmarking purposes. The Project Indecis is part of ERA4CS , an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, and funded by FORMAS (SE), DLR (DE), BMWFW (AT), IFD (DK), MINECO (ES), ANR (FR) with co-funding by the European Union (Grant 690462).

L'àmbit jurídic referent als contractes de conreu, i concretament, pel que fa als contractes especials sobre explotació de terres, ha estat desenvolupat per la Compilació del Dret civil de Catalunya (=CDCC), en els seus articles 337-3381. D'entre aquests preceptes, que estableixen el règim jurídic de la parceria a Catalunya, l'article 338 CDCC agrupa tot un conjunt de figures, considerades com a modalitats especials de parceria, en les quals, atesa la lletra del precepte, l'arrendatari assumeix com a obligació principal la millora d'una finca o bé l'inici d'un conreu; aquests contractes, que finalitzaran amb l'arribada del termini pactat, es regiran pels pactes entre les parts o, a manca de pacte, pels usos i costums de la comarca