Attributes and Challenges of Regional Climate Service Delivery:

The Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium Experience

Alex Cannon

Francis Zwiers Cassbreea Dewis

Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium

http://PacificClimate.org

" The Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium is a regional climate service centre at the University of Victoria that provides practical information on the physical impacts of climate variability and change in the Pacific and Yukon Region of Canada."

Director, President & CEO

Lead, Regional Climate Impacts

Lead, Hydrologic Impacts

Lead, Planning & Operations

Lead, Computational Support

Senior Scientist

Climatologist Associate Climatologist

Research Climatologist

RCI Analyst GIS Analyst

Programmer/AnalystHydrologist

Hydrologist

Programmer/Analyst

Administrative Assistant

Scientific Information Specialist

F. Zwiers

A. Weaver

T. Murdock

G. Buerger

M. Schnorbus

R. Shrestha

A. Werner

C. Dewis

S. Ma

M. Shumlich

J. Hiebert

D. Bronaugh

H. Eckstrand

P. Nienaber

F. AnslowD. Rodenhuis A. Cannon

Climate Scientist

S. Sobie

What is a Regional Climate Service?

An RCS is: • Service motivated • Regionally focused • Collaborative • Expert

“Translation and interpretation of regional and broader scale science focused on regional stakeholders and concerns”

Photo: F. Zwiers

Other desirable characteristics

• Credible, skeptical and cautious (avoid overselling)

• Concerned with broad span of time scales (not just the abstractly distant future)

• Advocacy should be anathema (except advocacy for an ethic of quality service and a commitment to deliver unbiased information)

Photo: F. Zwiers

Service oriented Specifics jointly determined with users or

user-motivated (i.e. anticipate user needs)

At PCIC our service objectives are to PROVIDE and DELIVER

• recent data and future climate projections specific to the PCIC study region

• analyses of the impacts of climate variability and change on the regional climate and water resources that are broadly relevant to the needs of PCIC’s users

• interpretation of regional climate information specific to user needs

Modes of delivery: Online delivery tools & Publications

Photo: F. Zwiers

Regional variations • Affected by political setting, stakeholder and

provincial gov’t interests, regional stressors, regional climate and climate influences

• Areas of critical expertise will be region specific

(the same physics apply to water flow everywhere, but the BC climate and land mass characteristics are different from those in Quebec … leading to a requirement to be expert on water flow in your backyard).

• Areas of activity will, in part, depend upon related federal, provincial and university capacity in the same region.

• For PCIC, this means collaborating on water, forest, transportation, and municipal climate issues, provincial data resources and their interpretation, adding value to EC products

Photo: A. Cannon

• With stakeholders across the public and private sectors • With researchers in university and government labs Both relationships equally important… and involve knowledge transfer (in both directions) • e.g., high-resolution downscaling for agricultural water

supply/demand modelling in the Okanagan Valley • Okanagan Basin Water Board, AAFC, Ministry of

Agriculture, UBCO, local grower associations, etc.

Collaborative

ExpertSufficient critical mass to develop and maintain leading edge expertise in at least 1-2 areas

PCIC areas of expertise

Some coming challengesQuantifying and communicating uncertainty in a useful manner as we go to increasingly smaller scales

How do we characterize the cascade of uncertainty as we go from a global emissions scenario to an impacts projection in Cache Creek where the downscaling target is a gridded historical dataset with 800m resolution?

Understanding that while human influence is projected to be large in the future, it remains a challenge to attribute current changes and events to causes on a regional scale. We will be asked to do more with comparatively less information (in situ network reductions, interest in extremes, etc.)

Photo: A. Cannon

Photo: F. Zwiers

www.PacificClimate.org

Thank you!