Grappling with uncertainties in physical climate impact projections of water resources
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Grappling with uncertainties in physical climate impact projections of water resources Rutger Dankers 1
& Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz
2
Received: 6 December 2019 / Accepted: 30 August 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract
This paper reviews the sources of uncertainty in physical climate impact assessments. It draws on examples from related fields such as climate modelling and numerical weather prediction in discussing how to interpret the results of multi-model ensembles and the role of model evaluation. Using large-scale, multi-model simulations of hydrological extremes as an example, we demonstrate how large uncertainty at the local scale does not preclude more robust conclusions at the global scale. Finally, some recommendations are made: climate impact studies should be clear about the questions they want to address, transparent about the uncertainties involved, and honest about the assumptions being made. Keywords Physical climate impact projections . Uncertainty . Multi-model ensembles
1 Introduction Ongoing climate change will affect virtually all sectors of our society in multiple, complex, ways. Assessment of these expected impacts has been an integral part of the Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since the beginning (IPCC 1990). Increasingly, these impact projections have been based on impact model (IM) simulations. Ranging from simple statistical models to sophisticated process-based models that can be used across multiple sectors, IMs are typically driven by the meteorological output of global or regional climate models and effectively translate the projection of a future climate into a projection of an impact. This article is part of a Special Issue on “How evaluation of hydrological models influences results of climate impact assessment,” edited by Valentina Krysanova, Fred Hattermann, and Zbigniew Kundzewicz
* Rutger Dankers [email protected]
1
Wageningen Environmental Research, Wageningen University & Research, Postbus 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands
2
Institute for Agricultural and Forest Environment, Polish Academy of Sciences, Bukowska 19, 60-809 Poznan, Poland
Climatic Change
Of course, running an additional impact model will often, although not necessarily always, add to the overall uncertainty that is inherent to climate change projections (Zscheischler et al. 2018; Kundzewicz et al. 2018). Over the past decade or so, several impact model intercomparison projects (MIPs) have been initiated in an effort to explore some of this impact model uncertainty, and enable coordinated assessments of climate impacts within and across sectors. Examples of these include the Integrated Project Water and Global Change, WATCH1 (Harding et al. 2011), the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AGMIP) 2 , and the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project ISIMIP 3 (Warszawski et al. 2014). The analysis of the outcomes of these MIPs has raised new questions about how to interpret the results of these multi-model experiments.
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