Conclusions and Summary

1. Conclusions and Summary • Once again: Goals and Strategy • Integration • Within NCAR, nationally, and internationally • Education • Management and Budget • Future Plans

2. WCIAS: Overarching Goal To improve society’s ability to manage weather and climate risks by creating and providing research tools and methods at the critical frontiers of impact assessment science.

3. Goals in Each Theme 1. To support improved responses to weather and climate risks by understanding and characterizing the uncertainties affecting the decision-making process. • 2. To increase the resilience of human populations to extreme weather and climate events through improved tools, modeling, and data. 3. To catalyze and nurture an interdisciplinary research community studying the effects of climate on human health.

4. WCIAS Strategy • Filling critical gaps in weather and climate impact assessment science • Developing integrating methods • Moving toward decision-making as a centerpiece • Promoting integration of assessment science activities at NCAR, nationally, and internationally

5. Integration within NCAR • CGD-ESIG-GSP(Flood project) • CGD-GSP-RAP-ESIG (Integrated uncertainty analysis in water resources) • Expanded role of GSP throughout NCAR • Other initiatives (Biogeosciences, Water, Fire, GIS)

6. Divisional Budget Structure FY04

7. Wildland Fire Biogeosciences Water Cycle across Scales Extremes GIS Uncertainty Cyberinfrastructure Climate / Health WCIAS Links to Other Initiatives

8. Initiative Linkages • Wildland Fire –developed model to forecast location of housing developments – AI improves predictive model by identifying sensitivity of decisions to people’s understanding of fire risks • Water Cycle across Scales – plans to use CRCM outputs in spatial scaling of extremes; analysis of future changes in floods and droughts • Cyberinfrastructure –use of structure to develop distribution system for high-resolution climate scenarios

9. Climate Variability and Uncertainty in Flood Hazard Planning Link between GIS and the Weather and Climate ImpactAssessmentInitiatives Mapping rainfall data to help better understand past flooding events along Colorado’s Front Range Spatial and temporal variability of extreme precipitation events Good case for spatial statistics Mary Downton, et al.

10. Land use/cover change Impacts Assessment Biogeosciences ESM Climate Impacts on Hydrology Managed and Unmanaged Ecosystems Land Surface / Atmosphere Interaction Atmosphere / Soil Carbon / Nitrogen Cycling

11. Initiative Collaboration with the Wider Research Community • Significant involvement of university community • NARCCAP – integration across NCAR, Universities, CCSP, and International Communities (and highlighting CCSM) • Links with international programs – (e.g., PIK, Tyndall Centre)

12. Recent University Participation • Uncertainty – R. Smith (U. North Carolina); M. Mann (U. Virginia); L. Sloan (UC Santa Cruz); W. Gutowski (Iowa State), P. Duffy (UC Berkeley), A. Cullen (U. Washington), J. Feddema (U. Kansas) • Extremes – P. Naveau (U. Colorado), E. Gruntfest (U. Colorado), H. Brooks (U. Oklahoma); R. Smith (U. North Carolina) • Climate and Health – J. Patz (Johns Hopkins); M. Wilson (U. Michigan); J. Mayer (U. Washington)

13. NARCCAP North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program Main Goals: • Exploration of multiple uncertainties in regional model and global climate model regional projections • Development of multiplehigh- resolutionregional climatescenarios for use in impacts models Multiple AOGCM and RCM Climate Scenarios Project over North America

14. NARCCAP Domain

15. NARCCAP Plan A2 Emissions Scenario HadCM3 link to European Prudence GFDL CCSM CGCM3 Provide boundary conditions 2040-2070 future 1960-1990 current CRCM Quebec, Ouranos RegCM3 UC Santa Cruz ICTP HadRM3 Hadley Centre RSM Scripps WRF NCAR/ PNNL MM5 Iowa State/ PNNL

16. Contributions to IPCC AR4 • Tebaldi et al. method being used as the main method for integrating new AOGCM simulation results on regional scale • WG 1 Technical Support Unit wishes to see other global climate modeling groups perform SRES land cover change experiments similar to WCIAS Initiative

17. Linkages with International Community • Numerous international presentations (Europe, Canada) • Formal links (MOUs) being established with PIK and the Tyndall Centre

18. Educational Components • Climate and Health Program – continuation of interdisciplinary education program on climate and health – Climate and Health Summer Colloquium (July 21-28, 2004) • Paleo Project – includes subproject of Education and Outreach – educational display on paleo climate (see poster)

19. Climate and Health Colloquium • Summer 2004 Sessions: • Climate and Climate Modeling • Climate and Infectious Diseases • Remote Sensing and GIS • Heat Mortality and Air Pollution • Societal Responses, Assessment • and Communication http://www.asp.ucar.edu/colloquium/2004/CH/index.html

20. Professional Development:Roles of Early Career Scientists • Lisa Dilling (ESIG) – AI project manager • Caspar Amman (CGD) – PI of paleo project • Susi Moser and Lisa Dilling (ESIG) – Leaders of decision-making theme in WCIAS • Claudia Tebaldi (ESIG) –Lead author on key papers on regional climate probabilities • Dave Yates (RAP) –Key role in hydrology modeling in uncertainty theme • Rebecca Morss, Olga Wilhelmi (ESIG) –Key participants in flood project

21. Intra-Initiative Learning • Development of greater interdisciplinarity among the participants in the WCIAS • This development is an ongoing process • Catalyzes integration within NCAR

22. Initiative Management and Planning

23. General Planning Process of Assessment Initiative • Four meetings with interested NCAR staff and several ESIG- specific planning meetings held to develop the three themes (second half of 2000 and first half of 2001) • Consultation with external collaborators • Written contributions from core group of interested staff, including all ESIG scientists • Several document iterations • One follow-up planning meeting held August 2001 • Several more detailed follow-up planning meetings on individual themes held in September/October 2001 • Initial funding provided in FY 2002 ($214K)

24. Budget Structure by Theme

28. WCIAS Leverages Other Funds • NASA, NOAA, NCAR ASP – Climate and Health $92K total • NSF – Land cover data bases - $170K • HARC – Human dimensions of the Arctic - $60K • NSF – CMG: Development of spatio-temporal and multi-resolution methods for detection impacts of volcanic and solar forcings in climate – $300K • NOAA-OGP – Scales of decision-making and the carbon cycle – $285K • DOE, NSF, NOAA – various amounts for NARCCAP • GSP program at NCAR – various amounts

29. L.O.Mearns Director Mentors B. Harriss W. Washington L. Dilling Project Manager • V. Holzhauer • - Financial Administrator • J. Oxelson • Webmaster • R. Haacker-Santos • - Admin. Assistant Advisory Board J. Meehl T.Wigley K.Miller B.Brown R.Morss D. Nychka Acting Dir. 03 Project Leads (11) C. Amman Climate Variability of Past Centuries M. Downton Flood Hazards Planning L. Mearns/J.Patz Climate and Health G. Bonan Land Cover Uncertainties B.Brown Extremes in Aviation S. Moser Decision Making and Uncertainty K. Miller Managing Wildland Fire Risk H. Brooks Downscaling of Extreme Phenomena D. Nychka/D. Yates Uncertainty in Model Simulations J.Meehl Climate Model Extremes R.Katz Extremes Toolkit Initiative Management

30. Management Activities • Monthly or bimonthly meetings – • Presentations on project work • Discussions with project advisory board and leads on project status, integration opportunities across projects • Individual project meetings • March 2003-March 2004 management activities lead by Doug Nychka (Acting Director) and L. Dilling (Project Manager)

31. The (uncertain) Future Near and Long-term

32. FY05 Selected Plans • Land Cover – application of CLM/CCSM to SRES land cover scenarios – inclusion of urban area expansion, interactive crop models, soil degradation effects • Regional Probabilities of Climate Change – bivariate model, spatial correlation, expert judgment of climate modelers for formation of priors, role in IPCC – use in impacts and for decision-making (e.g., UKCIP)

33. FY05 Selected Plans (cont.) • Changes in extreme sea surface temperatures and effects on coral reef health • Further application of extreme value theory • Analysis of heat waves (i.e., cluster maxima and length) • Determination of field significance of extremes • Detecting trends in extremes in observed data

34. FY05 Selected Plans (cont.) Decision-making focus • NCAR-RISA Collaboration • Presenting Uncertainty to Decision-Makers (Rand) • Feasibility Limits of Adaptation Strategies to Sea-Level Rise • Decision-Making at the Climate-Health Interface • Societal Use of Weather Information • Scales of Decision-Making • Carbon flux management • Water resource management

35. Vision – Future Plans Long term goals (5 years and beyond) • NCAR is recognized as national/international leader in Integrated Uncertainty Analysis including Decision Making (ISSE) • NCAR creates a complete, integrated program on extreme events (atmospheric science, statistics, societal vulnerability, decision-making) • Climate and Health Annual Summer Colloquium becomes world-class program in training students in this interdisciplinary field

36. Long-term Vision To improve society’s ability to manage weather and climate risks by creating and providing research tools and methods at the critical frontiers of impact assessment science. The WCIAS Initiative fills a need to bridge between: • Global/regional modeling/observations and regional assessments • Physical sciences knowledge and tools, and environmental and social science • Science/academia and decision-makers

37. Our Ongoing Commitment • Conduct cutting-edge, innovative research at the nexus of physical and social sciences • Build novel partnerships internally and externally • Maintain NCAR’s high visibility at the regional, national, and international levels to ensure that needs for advancements in assessment science are being met • Create innovative approaches to orient research in assessment science toward decision-making as a central focus

38. Vulnerability Decision-making Global Models Weather and Climate Impact Assessment Science Regional Assessment Scenarios Health and Ecology Inter/national Assessment Statistics and Physical Sciences