Clark et al 2016 CCCR - accepted manuscript.pdf (915.46 kB)
Characterizing uncertainty of the hydrologic impacts of climate change
journal contribution
posted on 2016-11-25, 12:08 authored by Martyn P. Clark, Robert WilbyRobert Wilby, Ethan D. Gutmann, Julie A. Vano, Subhrendu Gangopadhyay, Andrew W. Wood, Hayley J. Fowler, Christel Prudhomme, Jeffrey R. Arnold, Levi D. BrekkeThe high climate sensitivity of hydrologic systems, the importance of those systems to society, and the imprecise nature of future climate projections all motivate interest in characterizing uncertainty in the hydrologic impacts of climate change. We discuss recent research that exposes important sources of uncertainty that are commonly neglected by the water management community, especially, uncertainties associated with internal climate system variability, and hydrologic modeling. We also discuss research exposing several issues with widely used climate downscaling methods. We propose that progress can be made following parallel paths: first, by explicitly characterizing the uncertainties throughout the modeling process (rather than using an ad hoc “ensemble of opportunity”) and second, by reducing uncertainties through developing criteria for excluding poor methods/models, as well as with targeted research to improve modeling capabilities. We argue that such research to reveal, reduce, and represent uncertainties is essential to establish a defensible range of quantitative hydrologic storylines of climate change impacts.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Geography and Environment
Published in
Current Climate Change ReportsVolume
2Issue
2Pages
55 - 64Citation
CLARK, M.P. ... et al, 2016. Characterizing uncertainty of the hydrologic impacts of climate change. Current Climate Change Reports, 2 (2), pp. 55-64.Publisher
© SpringerVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2016-03-17Publication date
2016-04-06Copyright date
2016Notes
The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40641-016-0034-xeISSN
2198-6061;2198-6061Publisher version
Language
- en