Robust Spatial Projections of Real-World Climate Change

气候变化是社会和地球面临的主要全球挑战之一。随着人类活动导致更多温室气体的排放，预测气候将如何变化是气候科学家面临的全球性科学挑战。我们使用气候模型进行预测。由于计算能力的限制，以及我们对气候的理解存在差距，这些模型并不完美。因此，这些模型的预测也并不完美。我们面临着从气候模型中提取可靠信息的巨大挑战，这些信息涉及在不同温室气体排放的特定情景下，未来现实世界的气候将如何变化。这些预测是领导气候变化评估的核心，例如由政府间气候变化专门委员会(IPCC)编制的评估。该项目将使气候科学家产生可靠的气候变化预测和量化预测中的不确定性的能力发生阶段性变化。将开发一个新的框架，将来自模型、观测和我们对气候的基本理解的信息与现代统计技术结合起来，以产生预测。这个新的框架将应用于地球的三个重要气候体系：热带和副热带温度和降水变化；中纬度气旋和反气旋；极地温度和海冰变化。我们将汇集来自埃克塞特大学、雷丁大学、牛津大学和东安格利亚大学以及英国气象局的顶尖英国科学家(其中许多是IPCC的作者)，以应对气候科学中的这一重大挑战。我们的目标是促成一种文化转变，将理解气候过程和统计方法的各种方法从技术上统一起来，并巩固英国作为世界领先的气候预测科学中心的地位。

Climate change is one of the leading global challenges facing society and the planet. Predicting how the climate will change as human activities lead to emission of more greenhouse gases is a global scientific challenge for climate scientists.We use models of the climate to make predictions. Because of limitations in computing power, and because of gaps in our understanding of the climate, these models are not perfect. Predictions from the models are, therefore, also not perfect. We are faced by the huge challenge of extracting robust information from climate models about how real-world climate will change in the future under specified scenarios of different greenhouse gas emissions. Such projections are central to leading climate change assessments, such as those produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).This project will provide a step-change in the ability of climate scientists to produce robust projections of climate change and to quantify the uncertainties in projections. A new framework will be developed that combines information from models, observations and our basic understanding of climate with modern statistical techniques to produce projections. This new framework will be applied to three important climate regimes of Earth: tropical and subtropical temperature and precipitation change; middle latitude cyclones and anti-cyclones; and polar temperature and sea-ice changes.We will bring together leading UK scientists (many are IPCC authors) from the Universities of Exeter, Reading, Oxford and East Anglia, and the Met Office, to address this grand challenge in climate science. We aim to precipitate a cultural shift that unifies diverse approaches from techniques to understand climate process and statistical methods and consolidate the UKs position as a world-leading centre for climate projection science.