 Assessing the impacts of climate change
Scientists trying to assess the impacts of climate change rely on the results from climate models to assess what might happen to the climate in the future.
Impact scientists also have a whole range of different models to try and assess how climate change might affect water resources for example, or crop yields.
Modelling the hydrological cycle and water resources
New research just published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology compares the performance of several global scale hydrological models, including one developed by the Walker Institute's Director, Professor Nigel Arnell.
The assessment shows that differences between models can be a major source of uncertainty, and recommends that climate change impact studies need to use not only multiple climate models but also several impacts models.
The credibility of projections of the future impacts of climate change depends not only on the plausibility of climate projections, but also on the quality of the models used to translate climate changes into impacts.
Although the climate modelling community has long formally compared different climate models, using consistent inputs and measures of output, the paper published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology represents the first attempt to compare different impacts models in the same way.
Reference Multimodel Estimate of the Global Terrestrial Water Balance: Setup and First Results
Ingjerd Haddeland , Douglas B. Clark , Wietse Franssen , Fulco Ludwig , Frank Voß , Nigel W. Arnell , Nathalie Bertrand , Martin Best , Sonja Folwell , Dieter Gerten , Sandra Gomes , Simon N. Gosling , Stefan Hagemann , Naota Hanasaki , Richard Harding , Jens Heinke , Pavel Kabat , Sujan Koirala , Taikan Oki , Jan Polcher , Tobias Stacke , Pedro Viterbo , Graham P. Weedon , Pat Yeh
Journal of Hydrometeorology Volume 12, Issue 5 (October 2011) pp. 869-884 doi: 10.1175/2011JHM1324.1 |
Home
