Agenda

Agenda (PDF)

Attendance

Unfortunately, this meeting is at capacity and we cannot accommodate more attendees.

About this workshop

There is an increasing demand for actionable information on climate hazards and risks to support climate adaptation. A broad spectrum of users, in both the public and private sectors, need information on regional manifestations of climate change, especially (but not only) the probabilities of extreme events, their potential impacts on various sectors and enterprises, how those are changing, and the associated uncertainties. The research-type data output routinely from existing climate models does not meet this need, due to the models’ biases, low resolutions, and poor representations of extreme events, as well as the large data volumes that require considerable skill and judgment to render decision-relevant. In the last decade, the private sector has leapt into this gap, and a new industry has come into existence, largely focused on serving the financial sector. While this is an exciting development, the private sector tools are generally expensive, proprietary, not fully documented, and not generally peer reviewed, making it difficult to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, despite profound known scientific challenges with the production of the underlying climate data.

Governments --- federal, state, and local --- hold a great amount of climate risk, as do nonprofit non-governmental organizations. Private sector models are not ideal to meet their needs; accountability to citizens requires openness and traceability. In order to accelerate progress, it is critical that the underlying scientific assumptions and methodologies are widely and openly debated in the scientific community. Recognizing this, in April 2023 the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) published a report on Extreme Weather Risk in a Changing Climate urging federal agencies to develop public-sector tools to meet the needs of the US government and citizens. It is not yet clear who will take up this charge.

Broadly, the science in question forms a layer between standard climate models (such as those used in CMIP) and the user, consisting of GCM and scenario selection, bias correction, downscaling, impact modeling, and uncertainty quantification. While all of this is studied to some degree by academic and government scientists, it is not done in a coordinated way. There is nothing analogous, for example, to the Reanalysis products that form the best estimates of the instantaneous state of the climate system, or the CMIP archive that comprises the best projections of future climate. These latter products are open and broadly vetted by the scientific community. There is no such thing for actionable climate risk information, but there should be.

The workshop will bring together a relatively small group of scientists to think through how the basic research community can contribute to solving this problem. At the highest level, we will discuss what science, technology and organizational structures may be needed to address the need for actionable climate information and climate services, in the US and internationally. More immediately, though, we will aim to formulate a scientific agenda that can be used to entrain more basic researchers into this effort, and can inform US science agencies and other institutions as they consider how they may be able to support it.

Logistics

• Hotels:

  • Courtyard Pasadena: A block of rooms at the Courtyard Pasadena, 180 N Fair Oaks Ave, Pasadena, CA 91103 has been arranged at the government per diem rate of $179/night. If you are a U.S. Federal government employee, please do not use the room block -- make your reservations directly with the hotel at 626-403-7600 or directly online requesting the government rate. This will leave the room block open for those participants who are not eligible for the special government rate. Room block reservations can be made here; Courtyard Pasadena - JPL Climate Workshop. The cut-off date for reservations is 4 October 2024 at 5:00pm PST. Please make your reservation before that time. Please email wing.sze.lui@jpl.nasa.gov if you have any questions or encounter a problem in making your reservation.

  • Other hotels in the area include the Residence Inn by Marriott Los Angeles, or the Hyatt Place Pasadena. Caltech-affiliate hotel discounts can be found here: https://procurement.caltech.edu/travel#hotels-d9dbf8ee-tab

• Airports: Burbank-Hollywood Airport (BUR) is the closest airport to JPL and Pasadena. Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is the main airport in the county.

• Dinner: In planning, date & location TBD