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The U.S. Climate Variability and Predictability Research Program (CLIVAR)

Saturday, February 4, 2012


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U.S. CLIVAR produces a monthly electronic news-gram which includes timely information regarding upcoming meetings in addition to announcing climate research opportunities. To subscribe, send an email with "subscribe" in the subject header and include your contact information.

 

  

  

GET INVOLVED Highlights About US CLIVAR Search
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PPAI PPAI Meetings/Documents PPAI Science PPAI References/Links

PPAI Meetings and Documents

U.S. CLIVAR Summit - 2011 July 19-21 - Presentations from the panel's breakouts during the summit in Woods Hole, MA

U.S. CLIVAR Summit - 2008 July 15-17 - Presentations from the panel's breakouts during the summit in Irvine, California

U.S. CLIVAR Summit - 2007 July 23-25 - Presentations from the panel's breakouts during the summit in Annapolis, Maryland

U.S. CLIVAR Summit - 2006 July 26-28 Presentations from the panel's breakouts during the summit in Breckinridge, Colorado

AGU Special Session - December 2006 PPAI Panel Meeting - December 14, 2006

  • Minutes (pdf)
  • DecVar discussion (pdf)

A36:
Increasing Credibility of Climate Predictions
Conveners:
Alex Hall, UCLA, Dept. of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
Lisa Goddard,
International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia University
The purpose of this session is to examine the credibility of state-of-the-art climate predictions from seasonal to centennial time scales, with an eye toward improving them. On seasonal to interannual time scales, prediction skill can be evaluated statistically by comparing ongoing model predictions to the climate record as it evolves. However, to improve predictions on these time scales, it is necessary to identify and understand the physical mechanisms responsible for predictability and ensure they are properly included in models. On the longer time scales of climate change, it is challenging to evaluate prediction credibility, let alone improve it. The variation of the past century is the only example of forced climate change that has been adequately sampled on a global scale, so rigorous evaluation of model performance is limited to this single realization. Moreover, while current models give widely diverging predictions when identical future forcing scenarios are imposed on them, are all able to simulate a “hindcast” of the past century within observational constraints when realistic past forcing is imposed. Unlike the seasonal to interannual case, the observed climate record is of limited utility in determining which future projections are most realistic. On these time scales, the community is therefore forced to rely almost exclusively on the plausibility of the physical mechanisms underlying simulated climate change. Because of the importance of physical mechanisms in establishing prediction credibility and improving it on all time scales, we solicit papers that identify these mechanisms or evaluate their plausibility. We also solicit work on statistical methods demonstrating prediction reliability on seasonal to interannual time scales, and novel techniques for assessing model credibility on longer time scales.

U.S. CLIVAR Summit - 2005 August 15-18 - The PPAI panel met in Keystone, Colorado to discuss ongoing and future panel activities. Presentations made to the panel are provided below.

 

 

Announcements

U.S. CLIVAR Call for New Working Groups (pdf)

U.S. CLIVAR joint call with Ocean Carbon Biogeochemistry Group (OCB) for Working Groups (pdf)

U.S. CLIVAR Summit 2011 presentations online

U.S. CLIVAR Decadal Predictability Working Group publishes paper in BAMS (Feb. 2011, Vol. 92, No. 2)

NCAR Advanced Study Program Summer Colloquium - 6-24 June 2011; Statistical Assessment of Extreme Weather Phenomena under climate Change - presentations online

More Announcements

Science Tidbits    

26 September 2011: Seeking better answers to climate change, extreme weather

20 September 2011: Earth is losing Arctic sea ice: consequences could be global

17 August 2011: Study blames humans for half of recent Arctic ice melt

9 July 2011: Record south-central drought could continue into 2012, National Weather Service predicts

7 July 2011 - US Climate: The New Normal

10 June 2011 - NASA launches Aquarius

 

More News

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