Making Climate Change Data Relevant at a Local Level

Global climate models project that Earth’s temperature will warm by about 2°-4°C (about 3°-7°F) in the coming century. But what does that mean for communities, natural resource managers, and other local interests? And how can climate scientists ensure that climate data is useful to a wide range of individuals with different data needs?
In this webinar we will present a newly developed set of “downscaled” climate data that was developed in cooperation with the Upper Midwest / Great Lakes Landscape Conservation Cooperative. A novel aspect of this downscaled data is that the technique was developed after conversations with a wide variety of people who would be using the data. As a result, the dataset is flexible enough to address a number of research and assessment needs. The webinar will address the following questions:
- How can we develop climate data that is useful to a wide variety of communities who will be using that data?
- How might climate change be evident in phenomena that are relevant for impacts, such as extreme warmth, duration of heat waves, and precipitation intensity?
- How can we ensure that uncertainty in future projections of local and regional climate change is accounted for in climate assessment?