Collaborative Research: EaSM2--Advanced Climate and Regional Model Validation for Societal Applications

地球系统模型（EaSMs）全面概括了形成地球气候的物理、化学和生物过程之间的复杂相互作用。然而，它们的标准数据产品对大多数日益面临气候变化的规划和决策进程没有直接用处。它们（i）没有在（ii）所需的时间和空间尺度上提供必要的变量和数量，也没有（iii）在应用关键特性方面经过充分的质量测试。目前向最终用户提供EaSM数据的“传下来”的方法导致了关于场景、数据和所涉及的工具的大量知识损失。然而，这种知识，加上关于不确定性和最佳做法的透明和可获得的信息，对于确保有效决策至关重要。因此，要实现EaSM广泛投资的承诺，面临的挑战是将其广泛的功能与业务应用程序正确有效地整合，以便能够为需要可操作的，可靠的和透明的信息的用户提供相关信息。该团队汇集了气候建模和数据分析，水资源管理运营和规划以及天气和气候统计方面的专家。重点放在水资源上，因为水在气候变化影响中发挥着核心作用。这项合作将集中在四个主要任务上，这些任务将改变EaSM输出和相关水资源降尺度数据的使用：1。根据水资源管理需求，利用团队对关键物理过程的理解，确定影响决策的气候数据。2.调整和转换已建立的定量天气预报验证方法，用于气候模式评估。可信和透明的评价统计数据将是确定“最佳做法”用途的基石。3.描述未来气候预测中出现的变化，使用新方法将变化及其不确定性与具体的气候变化影响和需求联系起来。在国家大气研究中心（NCAR）的EaSM评估框架中实施新的验证方法，它们可以通过用户开发的基准为模型开发提供信息并丰富模型评估。将气候变化模拟与对水资源管理的影响联系起来的一个主要障碍是建模界和水运营界的不同观点，前者侧重于全球重要的地球系统过程和反馈，后者侧重于特定区域的局部尺度过程。该项目将通过小组成员之间的广泛对话克服这一障碍，以确定关键的决策信息以及如何从项目可获得的一系列全球和区域气候数据中提取这些信息。这项工作将导致新的方法，将气候变化科学和数据纳入水资源规划和运营，也是新的工具和基准评估EaSM性能，用于指导模型development.This项目是一个新的NCAR社区地球系统模型的社会层面工作组的倡议。工作组力求让气候科学家和气候信息用户参与对话，从而更有效地利用气候模型的输出。这项工作将开发用户适用的数据，并通过确定重要的、部门驱动的气候行为措施和部门应用的不确定性来源来改善质量控制。该项目的对话将为与其他水资源管理者的互动提供一个原型，并为从事其他业务活动的管理者开辟途径（例如，能源公用事业、运输部门、卫生界）就气候变化信息与气候建模者进行实质性互动。

Earth System Models (EaSMs) comprehensively encapsulate the complex interactions between physical, chemical and biological processes that form Earth's climate. However, their standard data products are not directly useful for most planning and decision-making processes that are increasingly confronted with climate change. They are (i) not giving the necessary variables and quantities at (ii) the required temporal and spatial scales, nor are they (iii) sufficiently quality tested for application-critical characteristics. The current "hand-down" approach for providing EaSM data to end users leads to substantial losses of knowledge about the scenarios, the data, and the tools involved. Yet that knowledge, accompanied by transparent and accessible information about uncertainty and best practices, is critical for ensuring effective decision-making. To realize the promise of extensive EaSM investments, the challenge is therefore to properly and effectively integrate its broad capabilities with operational applications so that it can be made relevant for users who need actionable, robust and transparent information.This team brings together experts in climate modeling and data analysis, in water resource management operations and planning, and in weather and climate statistics. The focus is on water resources because of the central role of water in climate change impacts. The collaborative effort will focus on four primary tasks that will transform the use of EaSM output and related downscaled data for water resources: 1. Identify the climate data, based on water resource management needs, that influence decision-making, using the team's understanding of key physical processes. 2. Adapt and convert established quantitative weather-forecast verification methods for climate-model evaluation. Accessible and transparent evaluation statistics will be the cornerstone for establishing "best practice" uses. 3. Characterize changes seen in future climate projections, using the new methods to link the changes and their uncertainties to specific climate change impacts and needs.4. Implement the new validation methods in the evaluation framework of the EaSM of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), where they can inform model development and enrich the model assessment through user-developed benchmarks. A major hindrance in linking climate-change simulations with impacts on water-resources management is the differing perspectives of the modeling community, focused on globally important earth-system processes and feedbacks, and the water operations community, focused on local-scale processes specific to a region. The project will overcome this barrier through an extensive dialogue among the team members that identifies key decision information and how to extract it from an array of global and regional climate data available to the project. The effort will lead to new methods for integrating climate change science and data in water resource planning and operations and also new tools and benchmarks for assessing EaSM performance, useful for guiding model development.This project is an initiative of the new Societal Dimensions Working Group of the NCAR Community Earth System Model. The Working Group seeks to engage climate scientists and climate-information users in a dialogue leading to more effective use of climate model output. The work will develop user-applicable data and improve quality control by identifying important, sector-motivated measures of climate behavior and sources of uncertainty for sector applications. The project's dialogue will provide a prototype for interactions with other water managers and open avenues for those in other operational activities (e.g., energy utilities, transportation sector, health community) to engage in substantive interaction with climate modelers on climate-change information.