5.5 Chapter Summary

Generic Downscaling Workflow, from Chapter 5 Intro

This chapter has worked through each of the steps of the above flowchart, previously shown in the introduction to this chapter. The last step, not yet covered is to use your downscaled climate variables to calculate your climate indicator(s) or run your impact model, and thus obtain calibrated projections of the metrics important for your domain application, for a future climate scenario. These calibrated projections will be used to answer the research question related to your engineering or other domain application, which is why the flow chart loops back to the problem you started with. This stage of the workflow is when your expertise in your field of study takes centre stage - you’ll need to interpret the projected changes to your indicator(s) or impact model outputs in the context of your field, and possibly use make decisions or recomendations about adaptating to the changes. This could mean updating design codes, protecting ecosystems, or redesigning infrastructure to be more resilient. Whatever your research question is, hopefully, this guide has given you the resources needed to use downscaled climate model projections to study it quantitatively.