Attributes and Challenges of Regional Climate Service...
Transcript of Attributes and Challenges of Regional Climate Service...
Attributes and Challenges of Regional Climate Service Delivery:
The Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium Experience
Alex Cannon
Francis Zwiers Cassbreea Dewis
Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium
http://PacificClimate.org
" The Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium is a regional climate service centre at the University of Victoria that provides practical information on the physical impacts of climate variability and change in the Pacific and Yukon Region of Canada."
Director, President & CEO
Lead, Regional Climate Impacts
Lead, Hydrologic Impacts
Lead, Planning & Operations
Lead, Computational Support
Senior Scientist
Climatologist Associate Climatologist
Research Climatologist
RCI Analyst GIS Analyst
Programmer/AnalystHydrologist
Hydrologist
Programmer/Analyst
Administrative Assistant
Scientific Information Specialist
F. Zwiers
A. Weaver
T. Murdock
G. Buerger
M. Schnorbus
R. Shrestha
A. Werner
C. Dewis
S. Ma
M. Shumlich
J. Hiebert
D. Bronaugh
H. Eckstrand
P. Nienaber
F. AnslowD. Rodenhuis A. Cannon
Climate Scientist
S. Sobie
What is a Regional Climate Service?
An RCS is: • Service motivated • Regionally focused • Collaborative • Expert
“Translation and interpretation of regional and broader scale science focused on regional stakeholders and concerns”
Photo: F. Zwiers
Other desirable characteristics
• Credible, skeptical and cautious (avoid overselling)
• Concerned with broad span of time scales (not just the abstractly distant future)
• Advocacy should be anathema (except advocacy for an ethic of quality service and a commitment to deliver unbiased information)
Photo: F. Zwiers
Service oriented Specifics jointly determined with users or
user-motivated (i.e. anticipate user needs)
At PCIC our service objectives are to PROVIDE and DELIVER
• recent data and future climate projections specific to the PCIC study region
• analyses of the impacts of climate variability and change on the regional climate and water resources that are broadly relevant to the needs of PCIC’s users
• interpretation of regional climate information specific to user needs
Modes of delivery: Online delivery tools & Publications
Photo: F. Zwiers
Regional variations • Affected by political setting, stakeholder and
provincial gov’t interests, regional stressors, regional climate and climate influences
• Areas of critical expertise will be region specific
(the same physics apply to water flow everywhere, but the BC climate and land mass characteristics are different from those in Quebec … leading to a requirement to be expert on water flow in your backyard).
• Areas of activity will, in part, depend upon related federal, provincial and university capacity in the same region.
• For PCIC, this means collaborating on water, forest, transportation, and municipal climate issues, provincial data resources and their interpretation, adding value to EC products
Photo: A. Cannon
• With stakeholders across the public and private sectors • With researchers in university and government labs Both relationships equally important… and involve knowledge transfer (in both directions) • e.g., high-resolution downscaling for agricultural water
supply/demand modelling in the Okanagan Valley • Okanagan Basin Water Board, AAFC, Ministry of
Agriculture, UBCO, local grower associations, etc.
Collaborative
ExpertSufficient critical mass to develop and maintain leading edge expertise in at least 1-2 areas
PCIC areas of expertise
Some coming challengesQuantifying and communicating uncertainty in a useful manner as we go to increasingly smaller scales
How do we characterize the cascade of uncertainty as we go from a global emissions scenario to an impacts projection in Cache Creek where the downscaling target is a gridded historical dataset with 800m resolution?
Understanding that while human influence is projected to be large in the future, it remains a challenge to attribute current changes and events to causes on a regional scale. We will be asked to do more with comparatively less information (in situ network reductions, interest in extremes, etc.)
Photo: A. Cannon
Photo: F. Zwiers
www.PacificClimate.org
Thank you!