New tool offers local climate change information
June 4, 2018
Lindsey Heaney
907-474-1939
A new web-based tool will allow communities in Alaska and western Canada to see how
global climate change could affect their regions.
A team in the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center at the University of Alaska
Fairbanks created the tool, which transforms predictions from global climate models
into more detailed information about local conditions.
鈥淲e recognized that these global climate models by themselves cannot be used at face
value,鈥 said 性欲社鈥檚 John Walsh, the project鈥檚 lead researcher. 鈥淭he raw output is not
suitable for what many users or decision-makers want. That recognition was the motivator.鈥
So the team created a tool to help people see and interpret the data. The tool displays temperature and
precipitation projections through 2100 under three scenarios for more than 4,000 communities
in Alaska and western Canada. The scenarios are based on three different levels of
greenhouse gas emissions linked to the burning of fossil fuels.
The tool can be customized. For instance, it allows users to ask questions like which
winter months may transition to above-freezing temperatures. Season lengths can affect
transportation, subsistence hunting and fishing, and other activities.
The tool is hosted at the 性欲社 Scenarios Network for Alaska and Arctic Planning group鈥檚
website.
鈥淵ou can get an output at the SNAP website for your community based on the work of
thousands of people in the climate modeling enterprise around the world,鈥 Walsh explained.
鈥淲e鈥檝e distilled all of these efforts down to tools that will get you the information
you really want for your location.鈥
The tool uses data from a process called statistical downscaling, which takes global
climate models and transforms them into models with finer resolution.
With the help of the SNAP group, the climate research center鈥檚 team looked at 30 global
models and identified five that worked best for Alaska and the Arctic. They compared
what the models said should have happened from 1958-2004 to actual historical data
from that period.
鈥淪ince climate in Alaska varies considerably from year to year and decade to decade,
we want to use the longest record possible," explained co-author Jeremy Littell, a
climate center researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage. "Averages
for 50 or 100 years are more reliable than 10 or 20 years."
The SNAP team also developed a for modelers and climate experts to better identify useful models. Of the roughly
30 global climate models to select from, each has strengths and weaknesses when considering
different regions and variables.
鈥淭he community charts tool is something very useful that came out of this, but so
is the companion tool that was created to help others in the research and modeling
community to better identify accurate models to help their future projections,鈥 said
SNAP operations lead Tom Kurkowski.
The researchers described their work in a recently published in the journal Environmental Modeling and Software.
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: John Walsh, 907-474-2677, jewalsh@alaska.edu
ON THE WEB:
Community data:
Tool for modelers: