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The Canadian Climate Impacts Scenarios (CCIS) Project. A collaborative project sponsored by the Climate Change Action Fund Elaine Barrow - Principal Investigator (Science) AIR Group, Environment Canada Canadian Institute for Climate Studies Presented by: Monirul Mirza. Project Aims.
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The Canadian Climate Impacts Scenarios (CCIS) Project A collaborative project sponsored by the Climate Change Action Fund Elaine Barrow - Principal Investigator (Science) AIR Group, Environment Canada Canadian Institute for Climate Studies Presented by: Monirul Mirza
Project Aims To encourage the use of a consistent set of climate change scenarios by the VIA research community in Canada • By: • providing basic national climate change scenarios • developing a nationally-consistent framework within which sector- and region-specific climate change scenarios can be developed • developing and maintaining a capacity to support climate impacts and adaptation research and assessments http://www.cics.uvic.ca/scenarios • involving the university research community and scenario users in the further development of climate change scenarios
Project conforms to IPCC-TGCIA recommendations: Guidelines on the Use of Scenario Data for Climate Impact and Adaptation Assessment (Download from: http://ipcc-ddc.cru.uea.ac.uk) • Focus is on climate change scenario construction using GCM output: • Warm start experiments
SRES Scenarios A1:A introductions of new and more efficient technologies world of rapid economic growth and rapid A2:A very heterogenous world with an emphasis on familiy values and local traditions B1:A world of „dematerialization“ and introduction of clean technologies B2:A world with an emphasis on local solutions to economic and environmental sustainability IS92a „business as usual“ scenario (1992)
IS92a, and now SRES emissions scenarios • GCMs which have been involved in model intercomparison exercises
IPCC-TGCIA Recommendation “Users should design and apply multiple scenarios in impacts assessments, where these scenarios span a range of possible future climates, rather than designing and applying a single ‘best guess’ scenario”
Web Site Products Introduction to web site products - PowerPoint tour Scenarios ‘primer’
What’s available ... • Climate change scenarios for Canada and North America • At original GCM resolution; 0.5° latitude/longitude • Mean changes wrt 1961-1990 for the 2020s, 2050s and 2080s; also monthly time series, anomalies • Monthly, seasonal and annual values • Climate variables, minimum data set: mean, minimum and maximum temperature, precipitation, a radiation variable, a humidity variable, wind speed • Advice on scenario construction, downscaling, applications, limitations and uncertainties http://www.cics.uvic.ca/scenarios
Scenarios from ... • Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CGCM1, CGCM2) • Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research (HadCM2, HadCM3) • Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIROMk2b) • German Climate Research Centre (ECHAM4) • Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL-R15) • Japanese Centre for Climate Research Studies (CCSR-98) • US National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR-PCM)
Application of Climate Change Scenarios Simplest method: apply monthly or seasonal scenario changes from appropriate grid box to observed data (either daily, monthly or seasonal).
Scenario Application Scenario changes applied to 1961-1990 climate normal data to obtain ‘actual’ values for the 2020s
2020s PRISM: 1961-90 Normals 2050s Scenario Application Present and Future Precipitation in British Columbia 2080s [Supplied by Bill Taylor, Environment Canada, Pacific and Yukon Region]
Scenario Tools • Scatter plots for scenario selection • Access to downscaling tools
LARS-WG: stochastic weather generator Access to SDSM and predictor variables for North America (soon global) Downscaling Tools
Recommendations • Use of climate change scenarios which preserve as far as is possible physical plausibility and spatial compatibility - implies use of GCM-derived scenarios • Use of multiple scenarios in order to capture the ‘state of the science’ range of future climate • If downscaling is considered to be necessary, be aware of the limitations of the particular methodology - does the ‘cost’ of downscaling add sufficient value to the coarse-scale scenarios?
Scenario Significance CGCM1 GAX: Winter precipitation change (%)
GCMs and Extreme Events ‘Hot’ summer
Future Plans • Interpretation of scenarios • descriptive indices, such as degree days, a drought index … • scenarios of changes in climate variability and extremes • further work on downscaling • more scenarios as more GCM output becomes available