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The Practitioner's Dilemma: How to Assess the Credibility of Downscaled Climate Projections

Authors:

Joseph Barsugli

Galina Guentchev

Radley Horton

Andrew Wood

Linda Mearns

Xin-Zhong Liang

Julie Winkler

Keith Dixon

Katharine Hayhoe

Richard Rood

Lisa Goddard

Andrea Ray

Lawrence Buja

Caspar Ammann

+9 more
Publication Type:
Journal Article
Year of Publication:
2013
Secondary Title:
Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union
DOI:
10.1002/2013EO460005
Pages:
424-425
Volume:
94
Year:
2013
Date:
11/2013

Abstract

Suppose you are a city planner, regional water manager, or wildlife conservation specialist who is asked to include the potential impacts of climate variability and change in your risk management and planning efforts. What climate information would you use? The choice is often regional or local climate projections downscaled from global climate models (GCMs; also known as general circulation models) to include detail at spatial and temporal scales that align with those of the decision problem. A few years ago this information was hard to come by. Now there is Web-based access to a proliferation of high-resolution climate projections derived with differing downscaling methods.