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性挑战之一。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一项全球性科学挑战。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，这些模型的预测也不是完美的。我们面临着巨大的挑战，从气候模型中提取可靠的信息，了解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。这类预测是主要气候变化评估的核心，比如政府间气候变化专门委员会（IPCC）的评估。这个项目将逐步提高气候科学家对气候变化作出可靠预测并量化预测中的不确定性的能力。将开发一个新的框架，将来自模式、观测和我们对气候的基本认识的信息与现代统计技术结合起来，以产生预测。这一新框架将应用于地球的三个重要气候制度：热带和亚热带温度和降水变化；中纬度气旋和反气旋；以及极地温度和海冰的变化。我们将召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气象局的英国顶尖科学家（其中许多是IPCC的作者），共同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，将不同的技术方法统一起来，以理解气候过程和统计方法，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.