Lack of clear standards and usable comparisons of downscaled climate projections pose a roadblock for US climate discovery and adaptation

Hartke, Samantha H; Newman, Andrew J; Gutmann, Ethan D; McCrary, Rachel R; Lybarger, Nicholas D; Lehner, Flavio; Wood, Andrew W; Arnold, Jeffrey R; Dixon, Keith W

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/adc74e

i

Lack of clear standards and usable comparisons of downscaled climate projections pose a roadblock for US climate discovery and adaptation

2025
By Hartke, Samantha H ; Newman, Andrew J ; Gutmann, Ethan D ; ...

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Journal Title:

Environmental Research Letters
Personal Author:

Hartke, Samantha H ; Newman, Andrew J ; Gutmann, Ethan D ; McCrary, Rachel R ; Lybarger, Nicholas D ; Lehner, Flavio ; Wood, Andrew W ; Arnold, Jeffrey R ; Dixon, Keith W
NOAA Program & Office:

OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; GFDL (Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory)
Description:

The release of global climate projections coupled with the demand for local-resolution climate-forced meteorology has prompted many research groups to downscale these projections using various statistical, dynamical, and current machine learning techniques. Such downscaled datasets are being used to plan infrastructure and other community needs over the coming decades. Faced with roughly a dozen available US downscaled datasets, many practitioners ask, ‘What are the relevant differences between datasets?’ This work highlights the difficulty of comparing downscaled datasets and illustrates ways in which datasets differ even when using identical climate model input data. We show that substantial variability in precipitation projections arises from downscaling alone and that the downscaled dataset agreement varies depending on global climate projection. This analysis emphasizes the need for greater coordination and movement toward rigorous benchmarking of downscaling strategies within the downscaling research community, à la the land-modeling community, to better quantify downscaling dataset differences, strengths, and weaknesses for practitioners.
Source:

Environmental Research Letters, 20(5), 054067
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/adc74e
ISSN:

1748-9326
Format:

PDF
Publisher:

IOP Publishing
Document Type:

Journal Article
License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Rights Information:

CC BY
Compliance:

Submitted
Main Document Checksum:

urn:sha-512:29e5fad61c66d1544267e01a8ccfe0089569bcf5a7cdde09883926ee5e1caedc60873270495252df227ad35c04f570ec9cb0c4411df1cc871d50c5aceb2b5e96
Download URL:

https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/71089/noaa_71089_DS1.pdf
File Type:

[PDF - 4.23 MB ]

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