Resilience Scanner

Downscaled Regional Climate Modeling for Local Projections

Solution Overview

The City of Austin's Office of Sustainability collaborated with ATMOS Research, led by Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, to develop geographically specific climate models for Austin through 2100 using the Camp Mabry Weather Station.[1] Dr. Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University and chief executive officer of ATMOS Research & Consulting, pulled national modeling data she developed for the 2014 Third National Climate Assessment and scaled down the information to apply locally to Austin.[2] Global climate model simulations were downscaled to the Austin Camp Mabry weather station using the Asynchronous Regional Regression Model to address local uncertainty resulting from factors that determine how Austin's climate will respond to global scale changes over the coming century.[1][2][5]

Technical Components

The modeling approach utilized simulations from nine different global climate models to address scientific uncertainty around how much the Earth will warm in response to human emissions and the limitations of global climate models in perfectly representing every aspect of Earth's climate.[1] The projections were based on two different scenarios for future greenhouse gas emissions known as Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to explore a range of possible futures.[3] These preliminary projections for Austin were based on a lower scenario where global carbon emissions peak and then decline by end of century, and a higher scenario where continued dependence on fossil fuels means that carbon emissions continue to grow throughout the century.[1] Historical data in this analysis came from the weather station at Camp Mabry in Austin for the period 1971-2000, with records indicating a summertime average temperature of approximately 84°F and a wintertime average temperature of approximately 53°F from 1943 through 2012.[3][1] Climate projections for Austin were averaged over 30-year time scales to address natural variability, which can cause climate variations from year to year or even decade to decade.[1]

Implementation Details

The projections developed through this initiative are for the Austin area for the period 2041-2070.[3] Austin Water is working with a team of climate scientists to develop a set of climate change scenarios for the region, and these scenarios will be used to model the potential effects of climate change on the Highland Lakes and to evaluate the effectiveness of different water management strategies under a range of future climate conditions.[4]

[1]: Source document 1 [2]: Source document 2 [3]: Source document 3 [4]: Source document 4 [5]: Source document 5

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