Climate Change in Planning and Design
Contents
Course Description
"But regardless of how much supporting scientific information is available, making choices about how to act in the face of uncertainty can prove contentious if people disagree about the nature of the risks they face or about which elements of these risks are most important." America's Climate Choices, 2011
This seminar-reading-discussion course focuses on special topics on the use of climate-change data and knowledge in planning, design, engineering and management. Topics include, for example, uncertainty in the context of decision making, non-stationarity in design and engineering, and vulnerability and risk assessment.
This course was designed for the Climate and Space (CLaSP) MEng in Applied Climate. The course is also designed to be accessible as an elective to those in other departments in the College of Engineering and across the University as a whole. The target is the professional who needs to incorporate climate knowledge in planning and design. Examples of subject areas include:
1) Description of uncertainty in climate data and projections and how to manage that uncertainty in planning and design,
2) Exploration of incorporating non-stationarity of weather into planning and design,
3) Discovery of vulnerability to changing weather and incorporation of knowledge into risk assessment and management.
These subject areas are at the leading edge, multi-disciplinary, complex and rapidly evolving. The course will include seminars by experts in the field, readings and responses. The course will consider application of the knowledge developed in the course to real-world applications.
"... in the case of some people, not even if we had the most accurate scientific knowledge, would it be easy to persuade them …” Aristotle, Rhetoric, 350 BC
Required Readings / Resources (2015) assigned
| Author | Title | Link | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hawkins and Sutton | The potential to narrow uncertainty in regional climate predictions | View Class Link | Classifying uncertainty |
| Barnett et al. | Potential impacts of a warming climate on water availability in snow-dominated regions | View Class Link | Basic research, assessment, and usability |
| National Climate Assessment | Southwest region assessment | View Class Link | Basic research, assessment, and usability |
| Hurrell et al. | Climate predictions and projections over the coming decades (recorded lecture (MP4), skip first 9:30) | View Class Link | Classifying and describing uncertainty |
| Moss | Reducing doubt about uncertainty: Guidance for IPCC’s third assessment | View Class Link | Communicating uncertainty |
| National Public Radio | Risk and reason(Recordings of radio series) | View Class Link | Communicating and using uncertainty |
| Pidgeon and Fischhoff | The role of social and decision sciences in communicating uncertain climate risks | View Class Link | Communicating uncertainty |
Required Readings / Resources (2015) to be assigned
| Author | Title | Link | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Climate Change Study Program | Best practice approaches for characterizing, communicating, and incorporating scientific uncertainty in climate decision making | View Class Link | Communicating and using uncertainty |
| Lemos and Rood | Climate projections and their impact on policy and practice | View Class Link | Uncertainty and usability |
| Knaggard | What do policy-makers do with scientific uncertainty? The incremental character of Swedish climate change policy-making | View Class Link | Case study of uncertainty use |
Resources Suggested (2015)
Lectures Powerpoint, Recordings, PDFs
Climate Introduction in One Lecture
Introduction to Uncertainty in the Scientific Investigation of Earth's Climate
AOSS 480 / NRE 480 Climate Change: An Inter-Disciplinary Approach to Problem Solving
Resources Additional (2015)
Overviews: Communicating, describing, organizing, using
| Author | Title | Link | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moss and Schneider | Uncertainties in the IPCC TAR: Recommendations To Lead Authors For More Consistent Assessment and Reporting | View Class Link | Communicating, describing, organizing, and using uncertainty |
| Moss and Yohe | Uncertainties in the IPCC TAR: Recommendations To Lead Authors For More Consistent Assessment and Reporting | View Class Link | Communicating, describing, organizing, and using uncertainty |
| Moss and Yohe | Uncertainties in the IPCC TAR: Recommendations To Lead Authors For More Consistent Assessment and Reporting | View [ | Communicating, describing, organizing, and using uncertainty |
| Moss and Yohe | Uncertainties in the IPCC TAR: Recommendations To Lead Authors For More Consistent Assessment and Reporting | View Class Link | Communicating, describing, organizing, and using uncertainty |
| National Research Council | Characterizing, Quantifying, and Communicating Uncertainty (Chapter 6) | View Class Link | Communicating, describing, organizing, and using uncertainty |
| Washington Post | How Not To Communicate Uncertainty about Climate Change | View Class Link | Communicating, describing, organizing, and using uncertainty |
Ensembles:
| Author | Title | Link | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Climateprediction.net | World's largest climate modeling experiment (Web site: Information in several tabs on the site) | View Class Link | Ensembles and describing uncertainty |
| Collins et al. | Climate model errors, feedbacks and forcings: a comparison of perturbed physics and multi-model ensembles | View Class Link | Ensembles and describing uncertainty |
| Tebaldi and Knutti | The use of the multi-model ensemble in probabalistic climate projections | View Class Link | Ensembles and describing uncertainty |
Philosophy
| Author | Title | Link | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parker | Ensemble modeling, uncertainty and robust predictions | View Class Link | Ensembles and describing uncertainty |
| Parker | Predicting weather and climate: Uncertainty,ensembles and probability | View Class Link | Ensembles and describing uncertainty |
| Lloyd | Confirmation and Robustness of Climate Models | View Class Link | Robustness |
| Hargreaves and Annan | Can we trust climate models? | View Class Link | Trust and Communication |
Model, Scenario, Internal Variability
| Author | Title | Link | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lynn et al. | Quantifying the sensitivity of simulated climate change to model configuration | View Class Link | Model, Scenario, Internal Variability |
| Harding et al. | The implications of climate change scenario selection for future stream-flow projection in the Upper Colorado River Basin | View Class Link | Model, Scenario, Internal Variability |
