Water Stewardship Information Sources
| Citation | Statistically Downscaled Climate Scenarios. Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium. |
|---|---|
| Organization | PCIC |
| URL | https://pacificclimate.org/data/statistically-downscaled-climate-scenarios |
| Abstract/Description or Keywords | PCIC offers statisically downscaled daily Canada-wide climate scenarios, at a gridded resolution of 300 arc-seconds (0.0833 degrees, or roughly 10 km) for the simulated period of 1950-2100. The variables available include minimum temperature, maximum temperature, and precipitation. Users may access the scenarios using an interactive map interface that allows users to zoom, pan and select their region of interest using a rectangular-selection tool. They can select and download scenarios for the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) (Meinshausen et al., 2011) and model combinations that are of interest to them and for the time period of their choosing. In order to download the downscaled climate change scenarios, users are required to log-in to the page using an OpenID (link is external) account. Access and download Statistically Downscaled GCM Scenarios. These downscaling outputs are based on Global Climate Model (GCM) projections from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5; Taylor et al., 2012) and historical daily gridded climate data for Canada (McKenney et al., 2011; Hopkinson et al., 2011). Statistical properties and spatial patterns of the downscaled scenarios are based on this gridded observational dataset, which represents one approximation of the actual historical climate. Gridded values may differ from climate stations and biases may be present at high elevations or in areas with low station density (Eum et al., 2014). Note that for the historical 1950-2005 period, which was used to calibrate the downscaling models, statistical properties of the downscaled outputs will, by design, tend to match those of the gridded observational dataset. The day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year, etc. sequencing of values, however, will not correspond to observations, since climate models solve a “boundary value problem” and are not constrained to reproduce the timing of natural climate variability (e.g., El Niño-Southern Oscillation) in the observational record. The ensemble of 12 climate models selected for downscaling is provided in the table below. The ordering, which differs by region (see map of Giorgi regions, Giorgi and Francisco, 2000), is selected to provide the widest spread in projected future climate for smaller subsets of the full ensemble following Cannon (2015). |
| Information Type | data, mapping |
| Regional Watershed | Province |
| Sub-watershed if known | |
| Aquifer # | |
| Comments | |
| Project status | ongoing |
| Contact Name | PCIC |
| Contact Email | https://pacificclimate.org/contact-us |