Issues in the interpretation of climate model ensembles to inform decisions
Issues in the interpretation of climate model ensembles to inform decisions
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DOI：
10.1098/rsta.2007.2073
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发表时间：
2007-08-15
期刊：
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
New, Mark
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Stainforth, David A.;Downing, Thomas E.;New, Mark
关于人为气候变化的现实，科学界已达成共识。这导致为减少大气温室气体排放量作出了巨大努力，从而减轻了气候变化在全球范围的影响。尽管作出了这些努力，我们仍致力于至少在今后几十年内进一步进行重大改革。因此，社会必须适应气候变化。适应和减缓都需要在从地方到全球的范围内采取行动，但适应可直接受益于区域范围内的气候预测，而减缓可完全由对全球问题的认识来推动;区域预测主要具有激励价值。我们讨论了如何解释气候模型模拟的大型集合的最新发展，以提供这些尺度上的信息，并为社会决策提供信息。适应是最相关的，因为它影响到无论气候变化如何都存在的决定，但这些决定对十年的时间尺度产生影响。即使在这种情况下，气候变化往往只是一个微小的影响;也许有助于限制选择“无悔”的战略。然而，如果气候模型要为社会决策提供投入，就必须对它们进行适当的解释。我们采取气候合奏探索模式的不确定性，潜在地提供了一个下限的最大范围的不确定性，从而不可贴现的气候变化信封。分析途径，描述了这些信息如何可能提供一个输入的决定，有时通过一些其他的分析程序，从而级联的不确定性。初步筛选被视为这一进程的一个重要组成部分，可能避免不必要的努力，同时指导决策者解决气候模拟信息的可信度和可靠性问题。我们的重点是使用十年到百年时间尺度的气候变化模拟作为决策的输入，但我们承认，对当今气候变化的强有力适应鼓励发展不太脆弱的系统，以及建立如何应对气候不确定性的关键经验。
There is a scientific consensus regarding the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This has led to substantial efforts to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions and thereby mitigate the impacts of climate change on a global scale. Despite these efforts, we are committed to substantial further changes over at least the next few decades. Societies will therefore have to adapt to changes in climate. Both adaptation and mitigation require action on scales ranging from local to global, but adaptation could directly benefit from climate predictions on regional scales while mitigation could be driven solely by awareness of the global problem; regional projections being principally of motivational value. We discuss how recent developments of large ensembles of climate model simulations can be interpreted to provide information on these scales and to inform societal decisions. Adaptation is most relevant as an influence on decisions which exist irrespective of climate change, but which have consequences on decadal time-scales. Even in such situations, climate change is often only a minor influence; perhaps helping to restrict the choice of 'no regrets' strategies. Nevertheless, if climate models are to provide inputs to societal decisions, it is important to interpret them appropriately. We take climate ensembles exploring model uncertainty as potentially providing a lower bound on the maximum range of uncertainty and thus a non-discountable climate change envelope. An analysis pathway is presented, describing how this information may provide an input to decisions, sometimes via a number of other analysis procedures and thus a cascade of uncertainty. An initial screening is seen as a valuable component of this process, potentially avoiding unnecessary effort while guiding decision makers through issues of con. dence and robustness in climate modelling information. Our focus is the usage of decadal to centennial time-scale climate change simulations as inputs to decision making, but we acknowledge that robust adaptation to the variability of present day climate encourages the development of less vulnerable systems as well as building critical experience in how to respond to climatic uncertainty.