A Synergistic Approach for Evaluating Climate Model Output for Ecological Applications
A Synergistic Approach for Evaluating Climate Model Output for Ecological Applications
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DOI：
10.3389/fmars.2017.00308
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发表时间：
2017-01-01
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Xavier, Jose C.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Cavanagh, Rachel D.;Murphy, Eugene J.;Xavier, Jose C.
气候变化对生态系统影响的日益关注促使生态学家和生态系统管理者寻求对变化的物理驱动因素的可靠预测。全球气候模型在生态学中的应用越来越多，尽管得出有生态意义的结论可能存在问题。获取和解释气候和地球系统模型的输出所需的专门知识阻碍了在最有效地利用这些模型来确定气候变化的更广泛影响方面取得进展。为了解决这个问题，我们提出了气候科学家和生态学家之间的联合方法，探讨了关键的挑战和进步的机会。作为一个例子，我们的重点是南大洋，值得注意的是具有全球影响的重大变化，以及海冰，因为它在这个动态的生态系统中发挥着至关重要的作用。我们结合的观点来评估海冰在全球气候模型中的代表性。强调生态相关的标准（海冰范围和季节性），我们选择了一个子集的8个模型，可靠地再现现存的海冰分布。虽然模型子集显示出类似的平均变化，在海冰范围的完整合奏（约50%的下降，在冬季和夏季下降30%），有一个显着的范围缩小。这将预测未来海冰分布的精度提高了约三分之一，并意味着它们更适合生态解释。我们的结论是，仔细的气候模型的多学科评估，结合正在进行的建模进展，应形成利用模型输出的一个组成部分。
Increasing concern about the impacts of climate change on ecosystems is prompting ecologists and ecosystem managers to seek reliable projections of physical drivers of change. The use of global climate models in ecology is growing, although drawing ecologically meaningful conclusions can be problematic. The expertise required to access and interpret output from climate and earth system models is hampering progress in utilizing them most effectively to determine the wider implications of climate change. To address this issue, we present a joint approach between climate scientists and ecologists that explores key challenges and opportunities for progress. As an exemplar, our focus is the Southern Ocean, notable for significant change with global implications, and on sea ice, given its crucial role in this dynamic ecosystem. We combined perspectives to evaluate the representation of sea ice in global climate models. With an emphasis on ecologically-relevant criteria (sea ice extent and seasonality) we selected a subset of eight models that reliably reproduce extant sea ice distributions. While the model subset shows a similar mean change to the full ensemble in sea ice extent (approximately 50% decline in winter and 30% decline in summer), there is a marked reduction in the range. This improved the precision of projected future sea ice distributions by approximately one third, and means they are more amenable to ecological interpretation. We conclude that careful multidisciplinary evaluation of climate models, in conjunction with ongoing modeling advances, should form an integral part of utilizing model output.