The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

Developing Climate Scenarios for

Climate Change I, A & V AssessmentsAn introduction to the resources on scenario development and application available for AIACC study teams

By

Dr Xianfu Lu, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research

At AIACC Training Workshop on

Vulnerability & Adaptation Assessment Methods

3~14 June, Trieste, Italy

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

1. Why do we need climate scenarios?

Next 30 minutes…

2. What technical support is available?

3. Why developing climate scenarios are so problematic?

4. What should be considered while developing scenarios?

5. What data are currently available in public domain?

6. What’s new from the technical support group?

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

1. Why do we need climate scenarios?N

atio

nal P

olic

y re

spon

ses:

ada

ptat

ion

and

mit

igat

ion

Global socio-economic assumptions

Sea level projections

Climate and Sea Level Scenarios

National integrated scenarios (socio-economic & environmental)

National impacts

Emissions scenarios

Concentration projections

Radiative forcing projections

Climate projections

Inte

ract

ions

and

fee

dbac

ks

Conceptual framework for conducting integrated assessment of climate change for policy applications.

Source: IPCC (2001)

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

2. What support resource is available?

• Tyndall Centre

o Advising on scenario design;

o Providing technical support for scenario development and application;

• Preparing technical notes on particular scenario development techniques;

• Conducting diagnostic analysis of climate model experiment results while appropriate;

• Updating study teams on the newly available information/data

• Regional mentors

o Latin America: Jose Marengo

o Asia: Roger Jones

o Africa: Bruce Hewittson

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

3. Why developing climate scenarios are so problematic?

Problem 1. Models are not accurate ….

… so we ‘cannot’ use data from climate models directly in environmental or social simulation models

… add model changes to baseline – mean and variability… use a weather generator

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

3. Why developing climate scenarios are so problematic?

Problem 2. Different climate models give different results …

… so we have difficulty knowing which climate model(s) to use

… select on basis of validation, age, representativeness, accessibility – or use them all!

…

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

3. Why developing climate scenarios are so problematic?

Problem 3. It is expensive to run many (global/regional) climate model experiments for many future emissions ….

.… so we often have to make choices about which emissions scenarios from

which we build our climate scenarios

… may not matter much for 2020s, but will make a real difference by 2080s… pattern-scaling methods may help if we only have results from only one

emissions scenario

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

3. Why developing climate scenarios are so problematic?

Problem 4. Climate models give us results at the ‘wrong’ spatial scale …

… so we have to develop and apply one or more downscaling methods

… these may be simple (interpolation) or complex (statistical downscaling, weather generators)

… RCMs may get you so far, but probably not far enough

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

4. What should be considered while developing scenarios?

1) How many scenarios do you need? Which uncertainties are you going to explore?

2) What non-climate information do you need in your scenario(s)?

3) Do you need local data for case studies/sites, or national/regional coverage?

4) What spatial resolution in your climate model output do you really need – 300k, 100k, 50k, 10k, 1k? Can you justify this choice?

5) Do you need changes in average climate, or in variability?

6) Do you need changes in daily weather, or just monthly totals?

7) What climate variables are essential for your study?

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

5. What data are currently available?

1) Climate reconstruction data

2) Observed climatology

3) Climate model outputs

World Data Centre for Palaeo-climatology (www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/data.html)

Climatic Research Unit, UEA (www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data)

NCDC (lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html)

NCEP/NCAR reanalysis (www.cdc.noaa.gov/cdc/data.nmc.reanalysis.html)IPCC-DDC GCM data (ipcc-ddc.cru.uea.ac.uk; ipcc-ddc.cru.uea.ac.uk/dkrz/dkrz_index.html)

Hadley Centre data (www.cru.uea.ac.uk/link/)

Canadian data (www.cccma.bc.ec.gc.ca/data.html)

• Data Sources

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

5. What data are currently available?

• SRES driving GCM experiments

1) DDC YELLOW pages (ipcc-ddc.cru.uea.ac.uk/dkrz/dkrz_index.html)

• Monthly time series (1960~2100);

• A set of core surface variables and a set of optional upper-air indices;

• Currently available for A2 and B2 runs from HadCM3, CSIRO-Mk2, NCAR-PCM, CGCM2); A1 and B1 from CSIRO-Mk2.

2) DDC GREEN pages (ipcc-ddc.cru.uea.ac.uk)

• 30-year monthly average (1961~90, 2020s, 2050s, 2080s);

• A set of core surface variables and a set of optional upper-air indices;

• No data available yet

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

6. What’s new from the technical support group?

1) Technical note on pattern-scaling GCM outputs

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

6. What’s new from the technical support group?

2) Diagnostic analysis of the IPCC TAR reviewed GCM experiments

• 1961~1990 climatologies against 0.5 degree observed climatologies;

• Seasonal (DJF and JJA) anomalies of precipitation and temperature from 9 GCM experiments for the time slice of 2080s

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions.

It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC –

and receives additional support from the DTI