The Paleolink working group launched
Today, the webpage of the Paleolink working group has been launched, a milestone that can be regarded as the official kickoff. This is an initiative framed within the PAGES 2k network, and as such it is not directly funded. Instead, it is open to anyone interested. Therefore, do not hesitate to contact me or join the mailing list devoted to the group, kindly provided by the University of Bern. Still, being under the umbrella of PAGES implies, among other things, that we will have the opportunity to apply for funding in the following months to organise workshops and related activities. I’ll inform you in this blog and other resources about incoming events.
In a nutshell, the aim of the group is to promote and investigate the added value of the application of Regional Climate Models in a palaeoclimate context. However, other side and related topics are also considered, including statistical downscaling, forward modelling, etc (see official webpage for details).
We the coordinators have sent an abstract to the PAGES 2k session of EGU2018 that summarises the aim of the working group and tries to disseminate this initiative. I paste below the content of the abstract, as it nicely summarises the scope of Paleolink:
The comparison of climate model simulations of past climates with proxy-based climate reconstructions allows assessing the validity of climate models under the impact of different boundary conditions (particularly when considering glacial climates). However, this comparison is burdened by the fact that most climate reconstructions are based on local or regional data, whereas the Earth System Models’ paleoclimate simulations have a rather coarse spatial resolution that leads to large biases over extensive regions and inhibits a realistic representation of the small scale features that affect proxy records.
To overcome this scale gap, different techniques are applied, ranging from a ‘naive’ approach based on selecting the closest grid point of the climate model to complex approaches that refine the simulated large-scale fields with the help of statistical or dynamical methods, i.e. Regional Climate Models. Although the latter has proven to be a valuable tool, the computational resources involved in long climate simulations normally addressed by climate reconstructions are large. The associated cost has limited the number of studies based on this approach. Currently, few regions have been subject to dynamical downscaling efforts, with a negligible number of high-resolution simulations compared to the number of coarse, global-scale simulations.
The PALEOLINK working group, hosted within the PAGES 2k network, aims at evaluating and developing new downscaling strategies that allows linking coarse Earth System Model simulations with climate reconstructions. It promotes reviewing, coordinating and stimulating future efforts trying to bridge the scale gap between the coarse resolution of state-of-the-art Earth System Models used in paleoclimate simulations and local and regional climate reconstructions. Both dynamical and statistical approaches to downscaling are considered, as well as novel combinations of both, including the use of forward models driven by downscaled climate model data reproducing the local climate and its variability. This group will run between early 2018 until the end of 2019, and is open to anyone who is interested.
Tags: Projects Paleolink PAGES
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