Project Overview
UDECIDE is exploring our capacity to predict climate impacts over decadal timescales and effectively integrate this predictive capacity with societal planning.
A new branch of climate science, known as decadal prediction, seeks to predict the time-varying trajectory of climate and not just the long-term trend over the next 5-30 years, as depicted in Fig. 1. UDECIDE is formulating these predictions in decision relevant terms to support planning and design for future hazards.
Figure 1: Schematic contrasting a decadal prediction of the time-varying trajectory of climate impacts with a projection of a climate trend.
UDECIDE focuses on two high-impact hazards driven largely by extreme precipitation: flood and drought. Indepth case studies provide a project focus.
Expertise across atmospheric science, climate-society interactions, economic impacts, statistics, communication and engineering design is key to achieving our goals to:
- Understand societal need and usage of decadal predictive information;
- Build predictive capacity of the needed information by combining our developing dynamical
modeling capability with observed data via advanced statistical models. Specifically, prototype presentations of decadal climate impacts will be assessed and an iterative process between information needs and information provision (Fig. 2) will then guide the effective integration of skillful predictive information with decision-making.
- Transform how scientists from multiple disciplines and practitioners conceptualize decadal climate prediction.
Figure 2: The integration of top-down and bottom-up approaches to inform climate-related decision-making. The overarching project goal to align the information needs with information provision will be met through continuous iteration between the impact prediction and the information need and usage by the decision maker within the decision space. Figure adapted from Dessai and Hulme (2004).
A key outcome of UDECIDE is a prototype generalized interdisciplinary research framework to integrate predictive capacity with decision-making.
UDECIDE is funded by the National Science Foundation's Decadal and Regional Climate Prediction using Earth System Models (EaSM-3) grants AGS-1419563, AGS-1419558 and AGS-1419504.
UDECIDE supports the vision of NCAR’s Engineering for Climate Extremes Partnership to strengthen societal resilience to weather and climate extremes.
