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  5. Developing High Resolution Climate Data for Alaska

Developing High Resolution Climate Data for Alaska

Dynamical Downscaling of Alaska Climate Data (Alaska Host Agreement project)

Dates

Start Date
2017-08-01
End Date
2022-07-31
Release Date
2017

Summary

Alaska has complex topography, with its extensive coastlines, dozens of islands, and mountain ranges that contain the tallest peaks in North America. Topography can have a strong influence on temperature and precipitation, therefore accurate representations of the terrain can improve the quality of simulations of past and future climate conditions. The spatial resolution of globally-available climate data is typically too coarse (~80 to 100 km) to adequately detect local landscape features, meaning these models aren’t useful for predicting future conditions in Alaska. In order for the state to adequately prepare for and adapt to changing conditions, high-resolution climate data is needed. One solution for acquiring this data is to [...]

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Contacts

Principal Investigator :
Peter Bieniek
Co-Investigator :
Uma Bhatt, Scott Rupp
Funding Agency :
Alaska CASC
Cooperator/Partner :
Scenarios Network for Alaska + Arctic Planning (SNAP)
CMS Group :
Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASC) Program

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SukukpakPeak_DaltonHwy_AK_BobWick_BLM.jpg
“Sukakpak Peak, Alaska - Credit: Bob Wick, BLM” 		thumbnail 389.01 KB image/jpeg

Purpose

Climate data used to evaluate change in Alaska are often too coarse to resolve key local features especially in complex topography. Dynamical downscaling uses a regional weather forecasting model to help provide the local context. Dynamical downscaling has been applied to the ERA-Interim reanalysis for 1979-2015 and two future climate model projections from the CMIP5 RCP8.5 scenario (NCAR-CCSM4 and GFDL-CM3) from for 1970-2100. These data provide 20km and hourly resolution for the entire Alaska domain and feature over 30 variables including temperature, precipitation (rain vs. snow), winds, humidity and radiative/turbulent fluxes. The downscaled reanalysis has been compared against observed temperature and precipitation to assess biases for Alaska and the data have been used in 5 additional published studies. The downscaled data have been distributed to more than 30 users for uses that range from glacier/hydrological model to blogging. The final Alaska downscaled database is quite large (~100TB) and efforts are currently underway to post-process and organize the data to best serve the needs of users.

Project Extension

projectStatusIn Progress

Sukakpak Peak, Alaska - Credit: Bob Wick, BLM
Sukakpak Peak, Alaska - Credit: Bob Wick, BLM

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  • Alaska CASC
  • National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers

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