09/28/2009

Improving Regional Climate Assessment

Summary

Global climate models with greater regional detail do not necessarily lead to a better estimation of regional climate projections. To address this, scientists have developed the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) in which global information from four general circulation models are downscaled dynamically using a suite of six regional climate models. This project is co-funded by multiple international agencies including the U.S. Department of Energy. Intercomparison and diagnosis of all the simulations when complete could provide information about the relative credibility of regional downscaling using climate models and these which will also be used to analyze uncertainty.

References

L. O. Mearns, Gutowski, W., R. Jones, R. Leung, S. Mcginnis, A. Nunes, and Y. Qian 2009: A Regional Climate Change Assessment Program for North America: Eos. September 8, 2009.