Conclusions and Summary Once again: Goals and Strategy Integration –Within NCAR, nationally, and internationally Education Management and Budget Future.

Conclusions and Summary• Once again: Goals and Strategy• Integration

– Within NCAR, nationally, and internationally• Education• Management and Budget• Future Plans

WCIAS: Overarching Goal

To improve society’s ability to manage weather and climate risks by creating and

providing research tools and methods at the critical frontiers of impact assessment

science.

Goals in Each Theme1. To support improved responses to weather and climate risks by understanding and characterizing the uncertainties affecting the decision-making process.

2. To increase the resilience of human populations to extreme weather and climate events through improved tools, modeling, and data.

3. To catalyze and nurture an interdisciplinary research community studying the effects of climate on human health.

WCIAS Strategy

• Filling critical gaps in weather and climate impact assessment science

• Developing integrating methods

• Moving toward decision-making as a centerpiece

• Promoting integration of assessment science activities at NCAR, nationally, and internationally

Integration within NCAR

• CGD-ESIG-GSP (Flood project) • CGD-GSP-RAP-ESIG (Integrated uncertainty

analysis in water resources) • Expanded role of GSP throughout NCAR • Other initiatives (Biogeosciences, Water, Fire,

GIS)

Divisional Budget Structure FY04FY04 Assessment Initiative

Divisional Allocation$683,556

CGD, 23%

GSP, 10%

ESIG, 50%

RAP, 17%

Links to Other Initiatives

GIS

Uncertainty

Climate / Health

Extremes

Wildland Fire

Cyberinfrastructure

Biogeosciences

Water Cycle across Scales

WCIAS

Initiative Linkages

• Wildland Fire – developed model to forecast location of housing developments – AI improves predictive model by identifying sensitivity of decisions to people’s understanding of fire risks

• Water Cycle across Scales – plans to use CRCM outputs in spatial scaling of extremes; analysis of future changes in floods and droughts

• Cyberinfrastructure – use of structure to develop distribution system for high-resolution climate scenarios

Climate Variability and Uncertainty in Flood Hazard Planning

Link between GIS and the Weather and Climate Impact Assessment Initiatives

Mapping rainfall data to help better understand past flooding events along Colorado’s Front Range

Spatial and temporal variability of extreme precipitation events

Good case for spatial statistics

Mary Downton, et al.

Land Surface / Atmosphere

Interaction

Atmosphere / Soil

Carbon / Nitrogen Cycling

Impacts Assessment

Climate Impacts on

Hydrology

Managed and

Unmanaged

Ecosystems

Biogeosciences Land use/cover

change

ESM

Initiative Collaboration with the

Wider Research Community

• Significant involvement of university community

• NARCCAP – integration across NCAR, Universities, CCSP, and International Communities (and highlighting CCSM)

• Links with international programs – (e.g., PIK, Tyndall Centre)

Recent University Participation

• Uncertainty – R. Smith (U. North Carolina); M. Mann (U. Virginia); L. Sloan (UC Santa Cruz); W. Gutowski (Iowa State), P. Duffy (UC Berkeley), A. Cullen (U. Washington), J. Feddema (U. Kansas)

• Extremes – P. Naveau (U. Colorado), E. Gruntfest (U. Colorado), H. Brooks (U. Oklahoma); R. Smith (U. North Carolina)

• Climate and Health – J. Patz (Johns Hopkins); M. Wilson (U. Michigan); J. Mayer (U. Washington)

NARCCAP North American Regional Climate Change Assessment

Program

Main Goals:

• Exploration of multiple uncertainties in regional model and global climate model regional projections

• Development of multiple high- resolution regional climate scenarios for use in impacts models

Multiple AOGCM and RCM Climate Scenarios Project over North America

NARCCAP Domain

A2 Emissions Scenario

GFDL CCSM HadCM3link to European

Prudence

CGCM3

1960-1990 current 2040-2070 futureProvide boundary conditions

MM5Iowa State/PNNL

RegCM3UC Santa CruzICTP

CRCMQuebec,Ouranos

HadRM3Hadley Centre

RSMScripps

WRFNCAR/PNNL

NARCCAP Plan

Contributions to IPCC AR4

• Tebaldi et al. method being used as the main method for integrating new AOGCM simulation results on regional scale

• WG 1 Technical Support Unit wishes to see other global climate modeling groups perform SRES land cover change experiments similar to WCIAS Initiative

Linkages with International Community

• Numerous international presentations (Europe, Canada)

• Formal links (MOUs) being established with PIK and the Tyndall Centre

Educational Components

• Climate and Health Program – continuation of interdisciplinary education program on climate and health – Climate and Health Summer Colloquium (July 21-28, 2004)

• Paleo Project – includes subproject of

Education and Outreach – educational display on paleo climate (see poster)

Climate and Health Colloquium

Summer 2004 Sessions:

• Climate and Climate Modeling• Climate and Infectious Diseases• Remote Sensing and GIS• Heat Mortality and Air Pollution• Societal Responses, Assessment and Communication

http://www.asp.ucar.edu/colloquium/2004/CH/index.html

Professional Development:Roles of Early Career Scientists

• Lisa Dilling (ESIG) – AI project manager • Caspar Amman (CGD) – PI of paleo project • Susi Moser and Lisa Dilling (ESIG) –

Leaders of decision-making theme in WCIAS• Claudia Tebaldi (ESIG) – Lead author on key

papers on regional climate probabilities• Dave Yates (RAP) – Key role in hydrology

modeling in uncertainty theme• Rebecca Morss, Olga Wilhelmi (ESIG) – Key

participants in flood project

Intra-Initiative Learning

• Development of greater interdisciplinarity among the participants in the WCIAS

• This development is an ongoing process

• Catalyzes integration within NCAR

Initiative Management and Planning

• Four meetings with interested NCAR staff and several ESIG- specific planning meetings held to develop the three themes (second half of 2000 and first half of 2001)

• Consultation with external collaborators

• Written contributions from core group of interested staff, including all ESIG scientists

• Several document iterations

• One follow-up planning meeting held August 2001

• Several more detailed follow-up planning meetings on individual themes held in September/October 2001

• Initial funding provided in FY 2002 ($214K)

General Planning Process of Assessment Initiative

Assessment InitiativeFunding by Theme, FY02-FY04

-

100,000

200,000

300,000

400,000

500,000

600,000

700,000

$214,6242002

$657,7692003

$683,5562004

Fiscal Year

Fu

nd

ing

Climate &Health

Extremes

Uncertainty

Budget Structure by Theme

FY02 Assessment InitiativeDivisional Allocation

$214,624

RAP, 29%

ESIG, 71%

FY03 Assessment InitiativeDivisional Allocation

$657,769

CGD, 17%

GSP, 10%

ESIG, 55%

RAP, 18%

FY04 Assessment InitiativeDivisional Allocation

$672,000

CGD, 23%

GSP, 10%

ESIG, 50%

RAP, 17%

WCIAS Leverages Other Funds • NASA, NOAA, NCAR ASP – Climate and Health

$92K total• NSF – Land cover data bases - $170K• HARC – Human dimensions of the Arctic - $60K• NSF – CMG: Development of spatio-temporal

and multi-resolution methods for detection impacts of volcanic and solar forcings in climate – $300K

• NOAA-OGP – Scales of decision-making and the carbon cycle – $285K

• DOE, NSF, NOAA – various amounts for NARCCAP

• GSP program at NCAR – various amounts

Initiative ManagementL.O.Mearns

Director

K. MillerManaging Wildland Fire Risk

J.MeehlClimate Model Extremes

C. AmmanClimate Variability of Past Centuries

M. DowntonFlood Hazards Planning

R.KatzExtremes Toolkit

B.BrownExtremes in Aviation

G. BonanLand Cover Uncertainties

D. Nychka/D. YatesUncertainty in Model Simulations

Advisory BoardJ. MeehlT.WigleyK.MillerB.BrownR.Morss

D. NychkaActing Dir. 03

Project Leads (11)

H. BrooksDownscaling of Extreme

Phenomena

L. Mearns/J.PatzClimate and Health

L. Dilling Project ManagerV. Holzhauer

- Financial AdministratorJ. Oxelson-Webmaster

R. Haacker-Santos- Admin. Assistant

S. MoserDecision Makingand Uncertainty

MentorsB. Harriss

W. Washington

Management Activities

• Monthly or bimonthly meetings – – Presentations on project work– Discussions with project advisory board and

leads on project status, integration opportunities across projects

– Individual project meetings – March 2003-March 2004 management

activities lead by Doug Nychka (Acting Director) and L. Dilling (Project Manager)

The (uncertain) Future

Near and Long-term

FY05 Selected Plans

• Land Cover – application of CLM/CCSM to SRES land cover scenarios – inclusion of urban area expansion, interactive crop models, soil degradation effects

• Regional Probabilities of Climate Change – bivariate model, spatial correlation, expert judgment of climate modelers for formation of priors, role in IPCC – use in impacts and for decision-making (e.g., UKCIP)

• Further application of extreme value theory – Analysis of heat waves (i.e., cluster maxima and

length)– Determination of field significance of extremes

– Detecting trends in extremes in observed data

• Changes in extreme sea surface temperatures and effects on coral reef health

FY05 Selected Plans (cont.)

• NCAR-RISA Collaboration • Presenting Uncertainty to Decision-Makers

(Rand)• Feasibility Limits of Adaptation Strategies to

Sea-Level Rise• Decision-Making at the Climate-Health

Interface• Societal Use of Weather Information• Scales of Decision-Making

– Carbon flux management– Water resource management

FY05 Selected Plans (cont.)Decision-making focus

Vision – Future Plans

Long term goals (5 years and beyond)– NCAR is recognized as national/international

leader in Integrated Uncertainty Analysis including Decision Making (ISSE)

– NCAR creates a complete, integrated program on extreme events (atmospheric science, statistics, societal vulnerability, decision-making)

– Climate and Health Annual Summer Colloquium becomes world-class program in training students in this interdisciplinary field

Long-term Vision

The WCIAS Initiative fills a need to bridge between:

– Global/regional modeling/observations and regional assessments

– Physical sciences knowledge and tools, and environmental and social science

– Science/academia and decision-makers

To improve society’s ability to manage weather and climate risks by creating and providing research tools and methods at the critical frontiers of impact assessment science.

Our Ongoing Commitment • Conduct cutting-edge, innovative research at the

nexus of physical and social sciences

• Build novel partnerships internally and externally

• Maintain NCAR’s high visibility at the regional, national, and international levels to ensure that needs for advancements in assessment science are being met

• Create innovative approaches to orient research in assessment science toward decision-making as a central focus

Weather and Climate

Impact Assessment

Science

Global Models

Scenarios

Statistics and Physical Sciences

Decision-making

Vulnerability

Regional Assessment

Health and Ecology Inter/national Assessment