Northwest Regional
Climate Modeling Consortium
First Meeting: December 9, 2016
Why a regional
climate modeling consortium?
To adapt and prepare for
global warming, society needs reliable guidance
regarding the future climate of the Pacific Northwest as
greenhouse gas concentrations increase.
In the past,
regional climate change research and planning was based mainly
on statistical downscaling, which assumes that the
distributions of climate parameters do not change, or applied
dynamical downscaling using regional climate
models with coarse resolution or only a small number of
realizations. These approaches
limit our understanding of how the local climate will
be altered in the future.
To provide
reliable guidance regarding the impacts of increasing
greenhouse gases on Pacific Northwest climate requires a large
number of high-resolution regional climate change
projections using full physics models and sophisticated
statistic correction. Such an approach will provide:
- More specific local details
reflecting terrain and land cover variations
- More realistic projections of extreme
events (heavy precipitation, heat waves, drought, severe
storms)
- Information about the probabilities
and uncertainties in the climate response
- Climate variables, like water and
energy budgets, specifically tailored to climate impacts
applications
- Better understanding of the
mechanisms determining regional climate changes in our
region.
Proposed Approach
We propose to bring together the resources of the region in a
cooperative venture to produce a large number of high-resolution
regional climate simulations (through 2100), driven by global
climate model projections, that will provide probabilistic
projections of regional climate change. The proposed
enterprise will connect atmospheric, coastal ocean, hydrologic,
air quality, and land use models to create a regional
environmental prediction system for periods extending from decades
to a century.
Proposed
Organization
A consortium of local, state, and Federal agencies, along with
private sector organizations, would support and guide the running
of state-of-science regional climate simulations.
We all need high quality regional climate projections. Can
we pool resources and do this together? A regional weather
forecasting consortium has proven that such a solution in both
viable and effective.
The First Meeting
On December 9th, we will meet to discuss a possible regional
climate consortium, with brief presentations on the current status
of the effort, followed by a discussion of how to move
forward. All interested parties are invited to attend either
in person or remotely. You will also learn about some
initial support by Amazon, including personnel time and computer
support.
Announcement:
First Meeting of Perspective Stakeholders and Participants
When: December 9,
2016, 1 PM-3 PM
Where: Rm 310, Atmospheric
Sciences/Geophysics Building
University of Washington, Seattle
Remote Access: Using WebEx:
https://meetings.webex.com/collabs/#/meetings/detail?uuid=M4EY0M6EJESDHYSX5LW0X1RCFX-G8X3&rnd=542460.88410
Meeting Number: 192 143 785
Host key: 424509
Audio connection: 1-415-655-0001
You can also get audio through your computer.
Alternative audio connection:
View dial-in numbers
USA: 1-206-315-1785
USA /Canada (toll free):
1-800-379-6841
Participant Passcode: 234127
Meeting Agenda:
Why do we need regional climate modeling?
Why is an ensemble of regional climate simulations driving by a
large collection of global climate models the best approach?
Some examples of initial attempts.
Current status to building the necessary capabilities.
A proposed structure: a regional climate modeling consortium
How could the effort be organized.
Discussion.
The meeting will probably run 60-90 minutes.
Background Material
White
Paper on Regional Climate Modeling
Powerpoint
Presentation Given At the Northwest Climate Conference-Skamania
Lodge (November 2016)
For more information contact: Cliff Mass, Atmospheric
Sciences, UW (cmass@uw.edu).
