Challenges and opportunities of generating and using local-scale climate information
Climate change is a global phenomenon that manifests at local scales. Developing robust adaptation strategies thus requires reliable projections of how local climate and weather conditions may change in future. To this end, many impact and risk assessments rely on downscaled climate ensembles, where outputs from global simulations are post-processed with the aim of providing more accurate and high-resolution information. In this talk, I will summarize the rationale behind climate model downscaling, outline commonly used frameworks, and discuss the uncertainties and potential biases of this approach in relation to other methodological challenges related to climate risk assessments. I will present recent results showing that the uncertainty introduced by downscaling is often considerable, particularly for extreme heat and rainfall events that can drive large impacts on human and environmental systems. Finally, I will explore potential pathways forward, for both provisioners and users of downscaled climate ensembles, regarding how to confront the challenges raised and ensure adaptation decisions are robust to the full range of plausible climate futures.