Assessment and Visualization of Regional Climate Risks through High-Resolution Ensemble Modeling and Big Data Analytics

最近的模拟工作表明，温室气体（GHG）的持续排放将导致气候系统所有组成部分的进一步变暖和长期变化，增加对人类社会和自然系统产生严重、普遍和不可逆转影响的可能性。虽然减缓气候变化需要通过全球共识和合作大幅和持续地减少温室气体排放，但适应气候变化已成为地方决策者和发展实践者的主要关注点。在加拿大尤其如此，近年来，极端天气事件频繁袭击其主要城市，造成了巨大的破坏。制定合理的气候适应决策在很大程度上依赖于基于影响的模式，这需要在空间和时间尺度上进行更精细的分辨率预测。此外，对温室气体排放情景、全球气候模式和物理参数化方案的模式选择可能导致与未来气候预估相关的各种不确定性。这些挑战已成为在不同时空尺度上评估未来气候风险的主要障碍。为了支持未来气候变化下的明智决策和弹性工程规划，开发可靠和高分辨率的气候预测以促进探索区域气候学的所有可能变化并量化当地社区和生态系统的潜在气候风险是极其重要的。因此，本研究的目标是在高分辨率气候模拟、不确定性量化和风险评估、大数据分析和高维数据可视化等多学科方法和技术的基础上，建立一个系统的方法，以促进不同时空尺度下未来气候风险的评估和可视化。拟议的方法将允许更有效和全面地考虑区域气候模拟和风险评估的复杂性和不确定性。将开发更有效和可靠的方法和平台，以支持在不断变化的气候条件下在国家、区域和地方尺度上基于风险的决策。拟议的研究成果将为决策者、利益相关者、资源管理者和发展实践者在未来气候变化下做出明智的决策，以建设有弹性和可持续的社区提供科学依据。

Recent modeling efforts suggest that the continued emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts on human society and natural systems. While mitigating climate change would require substantial and sustained reductions in GHG emissions through worldwide consensus and collaborations, adapting to climate change has become a major focus of local policymakers and development practitioners. This is especially true in Canada where extreme weather events have frequently struck its major cities in recent years and caused tremendous amounts of damage. Development of sound decisions for climate adaptation relies heavily on impact-based models which requires finer resolution projections at both spatial and temporal scales. Furthermore, modeling choices on GHG emissions scenarios, global climate models, and physical parameterization schemes can result in various uncertainties associated with future climate projections. Such challenges have become major barriers for assessing future climate risks at various spatial and temporal scales. In order to support informed decision making and resilient engineering planning under future climate change, it is extremely important to develop reliable and high-resolution climate projections to facilitate the exploration of all possible changes to regional climatology and to quantify potential climate risks to local communities and ecosystems. Therefore, the objective of this research is to develop a systematic approach based on the state-of-the-art multidisciplinary methods and techniques for high-resolution climate modeling, uncertainty quantification and risk assessment, big data analytics, and high-dimensional data visualization to facilitate the assessment and visualization of future climate risks at various spatial and temporal scales. The proposed approach will allow more efficient and comprehensive consideration of complexities and uncertainties in regional climate modeling and risk assessment. More effective and reliable methods and platforms will be developed to support risk-based decision making at national, regional, and local scales under changing climatic conditions. The outcomes of the proposed research will provide a scientific basis for policymakers, stakeholders, resources managers, and development practitioners to make informed decisions for building resilient and sustainable communities under future climate change.