Assessing Risk from Climate Change: Scenario Generation Versus Prediction

Sunday, February 17, 2013
Room 208 (Hynes Convention Center)
Peter Webster , Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Policymakers seek guidance from climate models for CO2 mitigation and adaptation policies. Current climate models are not adequate for producing probabilistic predictions, therefore making decisions based upon a ‘best estimate’ of future climate carries considerable risk. Whereas regional impact models can be driven by a wide range of future scenarios based not only on global climate model simulations, but also regional historical and paleoclimate data, climate dynamics and statistical models.