CGE Workshop on experiences and good practices. Cairo, Egypt 20-22 september 2007

Joint efforts to develop climate change scenarios in the Caribbean using regional climate model

Abel CentellaInstitute of Meteorology

Cuba

CGE Workshop on experiences and good practices. Cairo, Egypt 20-22 september 2007

OUTLINE

•Climate Change Scenarios from 1st NC to 2nd NC

•Creating and developing the PRECIS-Caribbean initiative

•Status of cooperation and future plans

• Contribution to 2nd NC and other activities

• Lesson learned and beyond

CGE Workshop on experiences and good practices. Cairo, Egypt 20-22 september 2007

• In 1st NC many countries used GCM outputs to produce climate scenarios. May be MAGICC/SCENGEN was one of the more useful tools.

•During and after the 1st NC, many NAI countries (mainly SIDS) claim for spatial detailed information (downscaling).

•New tools appear since then for downscaling. PRECIS is one of them.

Climate change scenarios, from 1st to 2nd NC

CGE Workshop on experiences and good practices. Cairo, Egypt 20-22 september 2007

S. V

State Variables

State Variables

S. VRCM

Domain

GCM grid

3.7 X3.7 degrees

RCM grid

0.5 x 0.5 degrees

What is PRECIS?

Providing REgional Climates for Impact Studies.A Regional Modeling System that can be applied to any area of the globe to generate detailed climate prediction at 25 or 50 km of resolution. It can be running in standard PCs.

Main and initial training is provided by Hadley Center

CGE Workshop on experiences and good practices. Cairo, Egypt 20-22 september 2007

PRECIS looks easy. But it demands …• Expertise and experience in atmospheric physics and climate/weather modeling

• Dedicate PCs to run long-time experiments (six months or more)

• Vast amounts of storage space for outputs

• Human resources to understand/analyze outputs and to produce REGIONAL results

• Some financial resources (not too much, in some cases)

CGE Workshop on experiences and good practices. Cairo, Egypt 20-22 september 2007

The PRECIS-Caribbean initiative• Is a regional collaborative effort to share: human and financial resources, experiences and results;

• Was born with a PRECIS training workshop in Havana (2003), where Cuba, Jamaica and Barbados agree to run different experiments over common domains and to share results;

• Following workshops took place in Belize, Cuba and Jamaica. Community Caribbean Climate Change Center provide an strong support and involve directly;

• Centers within the Caribbean are well committed and motivated. Avoiding the PRECIS-Caribbean died.

CGE Workshop on experiences and good practices. Cairo, Egypt 20-22 september 2007

• 50 km resolution climate projections are available for all the countries within the region;

• 25 km results are also available for east Caribbean countries

• Outputs are now available for SNC. An online access was developed by INSMET (http://precis.insmet.cu/Precis-Caribe.htm)

PRECIS-Caribbean status

CGE Workshop on experiences and good practices. Cairo, Egypt 20-22 september 2007

The PRECIS-Caribbean Status and future plans

• Training exercises are now conducted by Caribbean institutions. INSMET experts made a training exercise supported by CCCCC.

• The initiative is well recognized by Hadley Center, which provide an strong support.

• More countries are included in the initiative (Belize and Bahamas are starting to run other experiments)

• Arrangements for new experiments and reports preparation were agree in a recent meeting in Belize

CGE Workshop on experiences and good practices. Cairo, Egypt 20-22 september 2007

Examples of Results. Tropical Cyclones

CGE Workshop on experiences and good practices. Cairo, Egypt 20-22 september 2007 10

Historical North Atlantic and East-Central North Pacific Tropical Cyclone Tracks, 1851-2005

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Tropical Prediction Center/National Hurricane Center

Tropical Cyclone proyections

CGE Workshop on experiences and good practices. Cairo, Egypt 20-22 september 2007

Some lesson learned• PRECIS is more than a tool, it is an opportunity for capacity building and technology transfer

• Regional center will realize the importance of being part of a process. They will share the task of producing relevant regional climate scenarios among them.

• The regional research centres must possess a willingness to share the results of their efforts among them and with the wider community (scientific and non-scientific). Motivation through service.

• Shared more than results –experiences, frustrations, region specific solutions (especially storage), problem solving and analysis techniques

CGE Workshop on experiences and good practices. Cairo, Egypt 20-22 september 2007

Thanks so much!

Muchas gracias!

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