Water Stewardship Information Sources
| Citation | Murdock, T.Q. and D.L. Spittlehouse, 2011: Selecting and Using Climate Change Scenarios for British Columbia. Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, 39 pp. |
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| Organization | PCIC |
| URL | https://www.pacificclimate.org/sites/default/files/publications/Murdock.ScenariosGuidance.Dec2011.pdf |
| Abstract/Description or Keywords | The purpose of this report is to assist in the selection of projections of climate change by those who do climate change impact, vulnerability and adaptation analyses. The focus is on British Columbia but much of the content of this report is generally applicable to regional climate change scenarios anywhere, and builds upon the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines for use of scenarios. The report focuses on scenarios from the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and describes tools for data access that are readily available in BC. Climate change scenarios should be selected with an understanding of how they will be used. Some applications require an evaluation of the impact of specific emissions trajectories while others might consider the impact of highest and lowest case changes in climate. In sensitivity analysis, selected changes to climate variables are used to illustrate how something of interest (e.g., streamflow) is sensitive to changes in climate variables such as annual temperature or summer precipitation. A time series analysis requires monthly or daily data for a number of years and is particularly useful for an assessment of risk. Examples of using global climate model output to meet each of these tasks are included in this report. Sources of scenario data as well as visual images of the degree of projected climate change for western North America and regions of British Columbia are described with a focus on the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium’s Regional Analysis Tool1 and Plan2Adapt2 . The spatial resolution of global climate model output is often too coarse to provide sufficient local detail on climate. Downscaling tools to address this difference in spatial scales are illustrated. These include empirical tools such as ClimateWNA3 and BCSD4 , weather generators, and statistical downscaling. Scenarios with future monthly or daily time series and occurrence of extreme events are required for some impact analyses. Sources and methods of generating such data are discussed. A large number of projections of future climate are available as a result of multiple greenhouse gas emissions scenarios and multiple climate models. A subset is adequate for most studies. Three projections are recommended as a minimal set to use for climate change studies, based on providing a wide range of future climates for much of British Columbia: HadGEM A1B run 1 (hot/dry), CGCM3 A2 run 4 (warm/very wet), and HadCM3 B1 run 1 (cool/wet)5 . Additional combinations of climate models and emissions scenarios are recommended depending on the purpose of the study. |
| Information Type | report |
| Regional Watershed | Province |
| Sub-watershed if known | |
| Aquifer # | |
| Comments | |
| Project status | complete |
| Contact Name | Trevor Murdock |
| Contact Email | [email protected] |