Open AccessDeveloping perturbations for Climate Change Impact Assessments
Author(s) -
Hewitson Bruce
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
eos, transactions american geophysical union
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.316
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 2324-9250
pISSN - 0096-3941
DOI - 10.1029/2003eo350001
Subject(s) - downscaling , climate change , vulnerability (computing) , climate model , environmental resource management , scale (ratio) , climatology , impact assessment , environmental science , redress , vulnerability assessment , environmental planning , geography , computer science , political science , psychological intervention , psychology , ecology , computer security , cartography , public administration , psychiatry , geology , law , biology
Following the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report [ TAR; IPCC, 2001], and the paucity of climate change impact assessments from developing nations, there has been a significant growth in activities to redress this shortcoming. However, undertaking impact assessments (in relation to malaria, crop stress, regional water supply, etc.) is contingent on available climate‐scale scenarios at time and space scales of relevance to the regional issues of importance. These scales are commonly far finer than even the native resolution of the Global Climate Models (GCMs) (the principal tools for climate change research), let alone the skillful resolution (scales of aggregation at which GCM observational error is acceptable for a given application) of GCMs. Consequently, there is a growing demand for regional‐scale scenarios, which in turn are reliant on techniques to downscale from GCMs, such as empirical downscaling or nested Regional Climate Models (RCMs). These methods require significant skill, experiential knowledge, and computational infrastructure in order to derive credible regional‐scale scenarios. In contrast, it is often the case that impact assessment researchers in developing nations have inadequate resources with limited access to scientists in the broader international scientific community who have the time and expertise to assist. However, where developing effective downscaled scenarios is problematic, it is possible that much useful information can still be obtained for impact assessments by examining the system sensitivity to largerscale climate perturbations. Consequently, one may argue that the early phase of assessing sensitivity and vulnerability should first be characterized by evaluation of the first‐order impacts, rather than immediately addressing the finer, secondary factors that are dependant on scenarios derived through downscaling.