dECISIONS ARE BASED ON PREDICTIONS

Decisions in economics and society are sensitive to some elements of climate, such as temperature or precipitation, but not others. Similarly, certain climate changes strongly affect some sectors or activities, but not others. We need to find out what elements of climate and what kinds of climate change are important to today’s economic and societal decisions. Global and regional climate models can help with this determination.

References

“Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” by T.R. Karl, J.M. Melillo, and T.C. Peterson (editors), U.S. Global Change Research Program. Cambridge University Press, 2009. 

“Climate Models and their Evaluation” by D.A. Randall, R. Wood, and eleven others. Chapter 8 in: Climate Change 2007: the Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [S. Solomon and seven others, editors].  Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, UK, 2007.

“Glossary of Meteorology,” Todd Glickman, editor, 2000. American Meteorological Society, Boston, MA, 855 p.

Three presentations delivered to a Workshop on Scenarios of Future Climate, sponsored by the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, October 28-29, 2009:

  • Phil Duffy, Climate Central,  “Quantifying uncertainty and decision-making under uncertainty for climate adaptation.”

  • Ben Santer, Lawrence Livermore National Lab,  “Climate Scenarios 101: Which model is ‘best’?”

  • Linda Mearns, National Center for Atmospheric Research,  “Climate Scenarios 101: Regional Modeling and the North American Climate Change Assessment Project.”