P75 Advanced climate and regional model validation for societal applications

Brown, Barbara, Lawrence Buja, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), William Gutowski, Iowa State University, Laurna Kaatz, Denver Water, Caspar Ammann, Eric Gilleland, and Tressa Fowler, NCAR

Earth System Models (EaSMs) are being increasingly used outside of the scientific arena to guide decision-making in climate sensitive sectors. However, current EaSM experimental design, assessment methodology and output data streams are more suited to scientific assessment than real-world application. This project brings together water resource managers with climate and weather experts to assess real world needs from the climate models and incorporate these into the EaSM process. The fidelity of the new, decision relevant, processes and output fields will be assessed using state-of-the-art simulation verification methods from the weather community with the goal of both improving the EaSM and enabling resource managers to make better climate informed decisions. The project is in the early stages of identifying both the decision-making situations and the promising evaluation techniques that are applicable to this application, which targets both regional and global climate simulations. Progress so far as well as future directions will be described.