Understanding Decision-Relevant Regional Climate Data Products Workshop

Summary

The U.S. Department of Energy and its partners convened a workshop in November 2023 to address the challenges in producing, evaluating, and using decision-relevant regional climate data products, which are crucial for climate adaptation but often lack credibility, salience, and accessibility due to their coarse resolution and proliferation. Global climate models (CMIP6) typically offer data at 100km resolution, too broad for local decisions, while downscaled products aim for 5km or finer, with convection-permitting models targeting sub-4km resolutions. The workshop aimed to develop a coordinated national climate data strategy, proposing the creation of a community of practice and standardized evaluation frameworks. This effort builds on past initiatives like NA-CORDEX, which produced 40TB of data from 22 downscaled CMIP5 GCMs, while acknowledging the immense data growth from CMIP6 (over 15.8 PB) and projected fivefold increase for CMIP7, necessitating new cyberinfrastructure and coordination ahead of the NCA6 report in 2027.

Key Facts

Source Document

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