Developing High-Resolution CMIP6 Climate Scenarios for Alaska
Climate change is impacting nearly every aspect of life in Alaska, but global climate models lack the spatial resolution needed to predict changes to local hazards like avalanches and wildfires. Researchers supported by this Alaska CASC project will downscale CMIP6 climate models to produce finer-scale data that can be used by federal, state, and tribal leaders to make informed decisions about climate adaptation and resource management.
Project Summary
Climate change is impacting nearly all sectors of life in Alaska, including the economy, which makes it critical to have data on possible future scenarios for long-term planning. However, global climate models often provide output at a spatial scale that is too coarse to capture local climate patterns and extreme events. Higher resolution data is needed to understand how local hazards like avalanches and wildfires will shift as the climate continues to change.
This project will generate finer-scale climate data for Alaska by using a regional model to downscale global climate model outputs from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, Phase 6 (CMIP6). The research team will collaborate with federal, state, and tribal leaders to identify specific stakeholder needs and to ensure the downscaled data meets those needs. The latest generation of CMIP6 models offer a range of new climate scenarios, making this effort both timely and important for Alaska planners and managers. By downscaling a variety of these new global climate models and scenarios from CMIP6, the project will capture a range of uncertainties to support long-term planning.
Final data products will be publicly available at the end of the project to support ongoing planning efforts. These downscaled outputs will be highly valuable for studying local climate extremes and change in mountainous regions, enabling stakeholders to make informed decisions on climate adaptation and resource management.
- Source: USGS Sciencebase (id: 67252545d34e4f57573f5579)
Climate change is impacting nearly every aspect of life in Alaska, but global climate models lack the spatial resolution needed to predict changes to local hazards like avalanches and wildfires. Researchers supported by this Alaska CASC project will downscale CMIP6 climate models to produce finer-scale data that can be used by federal, state, and tribal leaders to make informed decisions about climate adaptation and resource management.
Project Summary
Climate change is impacting nearly all sectors of life in Alaska, including the economy, which makes it critical to have data on possible future scenarios for long-term planning. However, global climate models often provide output at a spatial scale that is too coarse to capture local climate patterns and extreme events. Higher resolution data is needed to understand how local hazards like avalanches and wildfires will shift as the climate continues to change.
This project will generate finer-scale climate data for Alaska by using a regional model to downscale global climate model outputs from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, Phase 6 (CMIP6). The research team will collaborate with federal, state, and tribal leaders to identify specific stakeholder needs and to ensure the downscaled data meets those needs. The latest generation of CMIP6 models offer a range of new climate scenarios, making this effort both timely and important for Alaska planners and managers. By downscaling a variety of these new global climate models and scenarios from CMIP6, the project will capture a range of uncertainties to support long-term planning.
Final data products will be publicly available at the end of the project to support ongoing planning efforts. These downscaled outputs will be highly valuable for studying local climate extremes and change in mountainous regions, enabling stakeholders to make informed decisions on climate adaptation and resource management.
- Source: USGS Sciencebase (id: 67252545d34e4f57573f5579)