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Regional Climate Modeling and Decision Aids- IDC HPC User Forum

Regional Climate Modeling and Decision Aids- IDC HPC User Forum. 8 September 2009. Glenn Higgins Atmospheric Sciences & Engineering Department Northrop Grumman. Introduction. IPCC reports have focused considerable attention on climate change and global and regional climate modeling

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Regional Climate Modeling and Decision Aids- IDC HPC User Forum

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  1. Regional Climate Modeling and Decision Aids- IDC HPC User Forum 8 September 2009 Glenn Higgins Atmospheric Sciences & Engineering DepartmentNorthrop Grumman

  2. Introduction • IPCC reports have focused considerable attention on climate change and global and regional climate modeling • However, there is a gap between the science products that climate models produce and the “engineering” products that planners need to: • Support mitigation and adaptation efforts at local and regional levels • Today I will discuss NG’s strategy and efforts to bridge the gap: • Through Regional Climate (downscaling) and Decision Aid modeling • Decision Aids translate scientific products from climate models to engineering products for local and regional planners • Along side the need for improved and higher resolution climate modeling and Decision Aids tailored for users, we need: • Additional computation resources to enable these scientific and engineering advances

  3. Agenda • Our climate change strategy • Climate modeling and decision aids • Some examples of climate products and decision aids • Summary

  4. Our Climate Change Response Strategy • Identify stakeholders, customers and needs • States of Virginia and Maryland, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG), CDC, NG Ship Systems, others • Establish working relationships with prospective customers • Workshop to establish credibility and understand needs • Identify decision aids areas • Health, energy, agriculture, water, sea-level and others • Develop partnerships with climate research community • Government Labs, Universities, Cooperative Institutes, Industry • Advance our Regional Climate Models (RCM) Capability • Acquire and Analyze NARCCAP data • Address regional uncertainties through RCM Ensemble simulations • Apply advanced supercomputing & network technology • Tools to enable the other elements These Steps Are Occurring In Parallel And Iteratively

  5. Climate Modeling and Decision Aids

  6. Many Significant Potential Effects of Regional Climate Change “In addition to increases in air temperature, the metropolitan Washington region is experiencing the effects of climate change with rising sea levels and a warmer Chesapeake Bay …” “Sea level rise is a major concern for coastal Virginia, particularly the highly populated Hampton Roads region.” “The amount of warming later in the century is dependent on the degree of mitigation of GHG emissions, with summer temperatures projected to increase by as much 9°F and heat waves extending throughout most summers if GHG emissions continue to grow unchecked.” “These increases could have significant economic impacts as well as devastating impacts on public health and the environment, …”

  7. Users Decision Aids Regional Climate Models Global Climate Models Global Observing System Climate Modeling and Decision Aids Actionable decision aid Empirical and explicit decision domain modeling Observations, Best Science, and Physical Models Regional Downscaling Captures local effects and better physics Raw Global-scale model results High resolution regional model results

  8. Climate Models and Decision Aids:Regional Climate Models • Provide higher resolution modeling over a limited area • Are able to model physical processes not resolved by the global climate models • e.g., precipitation processes are not well-modeled by the global models • The weakness of current regional climate models is that they are not interactively coupled with the global climate models • Current research is addressing this limitation • Due to uncertainties in climate modeling no single simulation is reliable • Our approach is to quantify the uncertainty by performing a number of simulations (e.g., Ensemble of runs) requiring more computation resources than a single run

  9. Some Examples of Climate Productsand Decision Aids

  10. Washington, Dulles Lynchburg Reagan National Roanoke Richmond Norfolk Cape Hatteras Some Examples Climate Products andDecision Aids Annual Temperatures for Several Cities Plots below show the mean annual temperature over each site • At most sites, temp increases throughout the current and future periods, although the rate of increase is much higher in the future period • Biases are evident at some sites and vary by season

  11. Some Examples Climate Products and Decision Aids Agriculture: VA Growing Season Use: Agricultural planning, crop selection and rotation, trends in food sources

  12. Some Examples Climate Products and Decision Aids Health: VA Heat Index Bias corrected by month Use: City planning, emergency planning, public facility planning, HVAC planning

  13. Some Examples Climate Products and Decision Aids Energy: VA Cooling Degree Days and Energy Demand Bias corrected by month Use: Strategic energy planning, future energy demand, power plant needs, alterative power sources

  14. Some Examples Climate Products and Decision Aids Example of Coastal Inundation Modeling • Hurricane Isabel in September 2003 caused extensive coastal flooding in the Chesapeake Bay • IPCC projects more frequent and stronger coastal storms, including hurricanes • IPCC also projects sea level rise due to ice melt and thermal expansion of ocean water • The coupled effect of sea level rise and storm surge will be important issues for coastal area planning • A combination of simulations of storm frequency and intensity from regional climate models coupled with coastal inundation models can provide planners with critical adaptation information

  15. Some Example Climate Products and Decision Aids: Hurricane Isabel -- Storm Surge Modeling Modeling by the University of Maryland 15

  16. Summary Northrop Grumman is reaching out to regional and local planners in order to understand user needs for climate information The combination of global and regional climate models and user-oriented decision aids can provide critical information to planners Using past climatic data as a surrogate for future planning is not consistent with IPCC projections Although climate models have weaknesses, they are improving and offer the best guidance for planning today Running multiple simulations with multiple climate models creates a range of solutions and permits probabilistic estimates Interaction with users is critical to optimally tailoring decision aid development and making best use of climate data The need for high resolution climate modeling and decision aids creates even more need for additional computation resources

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