Thinking, small and big
Filed under:
Climate Science
— rasmus @ 29 November 2020
The point that climate downscaling must pay attention to the law of small numbers is no joke.
The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) will become a ‘new’ WCRP with a “soft launch†in 2021. This is quite a big story since it coordinates much of the research and the substance on which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) builds.
Until now, the COordinated Regional Downscaling EXperiment (CORDEX) has been a major project sponsored by the WRCP. CORDEX has involved regional modelling and downscaling with a focus on the models and methods rather than providing climate services. In its new form, the activities that used to be carried out within CORDEX will belong to the WCRP community called ‘Regional information for society’ (RifS). This implies a slight shift in emphasis.
With this change, the WCRP signals a desire for the regional modelling results to become more useful and relevant for decision-makers. The change will also introduce a set of new requirements, and hence the law of small numbers.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/11/thinking-small-and-big/
