Journal article
Method uncertainty is essential for reliable confidence statements of precipitation projections
P Uhe, D Mitchell, PD Bates, MR Allen, RA Betts, C Huntingford, AD King, BM Sanderson, H Shiogama
Journal of Climate | American Meteorological Society | Published : 2021
Abstract
Precipitation events cause disruption around the world and will be altered by climate change. However, different climate modeling approaches can result in different future precipitation projections. The corresponding ''method uncertainty'' is rarely explicitly calculated in climate impact studies and major reports but can substantially change estimated precipitation changes. A comparison across five commonly used modeling activities shows that, for changes in mean precipitation, less than half of the regions analyzed had significant changes between the present climate and 1.58C global warming for the majority of modeling activities. This increases to just over half of the regions for changes..
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Awarded by National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center
Funding Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme, which, through its Working Group on Coupled modeling, coordinated and promoted CMIP5 and CMIP6. We thank the climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model output, the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) for archiving the data and providing access, and the multiple funding agencies who support CMIP5, CMIP6, and ESGF. This research used science gateway resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which is a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC02-05CH11231. The work of author Betts and the production of the HELIX simulations were supported by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 under Grant Agreement 603864 (HELIX: "High-End cLimate Impacts and eXtremes"; https://www.helixclimate.eu) and the U.K. BEIS/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme (GA01101). Author Bates is supported by a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. Author Huntingford acknowledges the Natural Environment Research Council National Capability award to the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Author King is funded by the Australian Research Council (DE180100638). Author Sanderson is funded by the French National Research Agency, project number ANR-17-MPGA-0016. Author Shiogama was supported by the Integrated Research Program for Advancing Climate Models (JPMXD0717935457) and the Climate Change Adaptation Research Program of NIES.