Publication
Providing accurate and reliable information about future climate is a key part of informing adaptation policy, and reducing uncertainty by constraining future projections can contribute to better decision making. This paper, published within the EUCP project, details a new method of reducing uncertainty from internal climate variability by constraining climate
Providing accurate and reliable information about future climate is a key part of informing adaptation policy, and reducing uncertainty by constraining future projections can contribute to better decision making. This paper, published within the EUCP project, details a new method of reducing uncertainty from internal climate variability by constraining climate projections for the next 20 years using decadal predictions, aligning the projections with natural climate variability phases. The team were able to improve the accuracy of their constrained projections when compared against the unconstrained ensemble, as well as projecting stronger summer warming in the Sahara, and western and southern Asia out to 2035. These findings help provide more accurate information about future climate changes, contributing to effective climate policy.
Abstract
Targeted adaptation to near-term climate change requires accurate, reliable, and actionable climate information for the next few decades. Climate projections simulate the response to radiative forcing, but are subject to substantial uncertainties due to internal variability. Decadal climate predictions aim to reduce this uncertainty by initializing the simulations using observations, but are typically limited to the next 10 years. Here, we use decadal predictions to constrain climate projections beyond the next decade and demonstrate that accounting for climate variability improves regional projections of 20-year average temperatures. Applying this constraint to climate projections of the near future until 2035, summer temperatures over land regions in Asia and Africa tend to show stronger changes within the warming range simulated by the larger, unconstrained, ensemble—consistent with a warm phase in North Atlantic variability. This improved regional climate information can enable tailored adaptation to climate changes in the coming decades.