Statistical Downscaling of Global Climate Model Projections

The Climate Research Division (CRD) of Environment and Climate Change Canada has a mandate to provide Canadians with past and future climate change scientific information for climate impact assessments, adaptation planning and mitigation policies. This information is generated based on the use of climate observations, results from multiple global climate models (GCMs), and integrated analyses. There is a growing demand in Canada and internationally for GCM projections to be downscaled at high spatial resolutions. There are also many Canadian users who have scientific and other interests that span the Canada/US border, demanding information for North America.

CRD produced, by means of service contracts, statistically downscaled scenarios based on the simulations by the climate models that participated in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) in 2015. These have been widely used and are currently available on Climate Change Data and Scenarios website (http://climate-scenarios.canada.ca/?page=main) and the Pacific Climate Impact Consortium’s climate change scenarios data portal (https://www.pacificclimate.org/data/statistically-downscaled-climate-scenarios). There have been recent developments in multiple fronts including the availability of new climate projections by the climate models participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) and driven by new emission scenarios, new downscaling methods including these that maintain co-variability among variables, and better observational data products as target data. The objective of this project is to update the existing products that take advantage of these new developments and that can meet new and evolving needs.

CRD is seeking professional support to statistically downscale climate simulations generated from the CMIP6 data.