APECS is happy to be participating in the upcoming Adaptation of Actions for a Changing Arctic (AACA) meeting being held in St Petersburg, Russia, April 22-26, 2013. The AACA series of workshops is being lead by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), a working group of the Arctic Council.
The overall aim of the workshop is to develop strategies to meet user needs to analyze consequences that may occur in relation to combined effects on the Arctic ecosystems and on social and economic development, based on current climate models. From AMAP "The use of climate model outputs in practical applications is a significant scientific challenge. Model data can be useless or even misleading if used improperly. Improper use of model data is a result of both unsatisfactory communication between providers (modellers) and users (economy sectors, etc.) and existing major gaps in the scientific knowledge. The challenge is particularly pronounced in the Arctic region with its notorious inter-model projection scatters and the vigorous climate variability. The scientific problems of model data use in impact studies include approaches to model discrimination, dealing with model ensembles and associated probabilities and uncertainties, added value and added uncertainties of downscaling techniques, different confidence in model projections of different climate variables, etc. The key question: what can climate science suggest to users in various sectors?"
APECS Russia members, as well as an APECS representative will be participating in the workshop, which brings together climate modellers, marine and terrestrial system researchers, social scientists and socio-economic modellers. Check in here mext month for a summary of the meeting, and an update on the AACA program.
