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GFDL Statistical Downscaling Team’s Projects & Linkages

Programs and organizations with whom the GFDL ESD Team interacts, as well as entities supporting some of our work

[NOAA CPO]       [DOD ESTCP]       [SC CASC]       [NCPP]


Projects & Linkages

[NOAA Climate Program Office logo]
NOAA CPO: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration Climate Program Office
Support from NOAA CPO has benefited various GFDL researchers in their pursuit of increasing the scientific understanding of climate variability and change, with a focus on advancing the computer modeling of climate across a wide range of time scales. Three instances of ESD Team projects supported in part by NOAA CPO are listed here.
[ NIHHIS logo ]     In 2022, the GFDL ESD Team began work on a project that has some funding support from NOAA CPO to examine the use of bias corrected and statistically downscaled climate projections in heat and human health studies of interest to CPO’s Extreme Heat Risk Area Team and the interagency National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) program. The project’s initial focus has been on the northeastern United States, with an emphasis on the urban heat island of Philadelphia.  For more information, see our Downscaled Climate Projections for Heat & Health Applications Project Page.
Starting in 2023, our team is receiving support to work with NOAA CPO’s Communication, Education and Engagement Division and colleagues at Cornell University on a Consumer Report’s like evaluation of CMIP6-era statistically downscaled climate products used by many government, NGO, and private sector to inform decision-making. Our research results will be translated into forms suitable for communication to stakeholders as part of an interagency initiative known as the Climate Resilience Information System (CRIS).
    Earlier, when our team was first formed, support of the unfortunately short-lived NCPP (see section below) by the NOAA CPO Modeling, Analysis, Predictions and Projections (MAPP) program benefited our statistical downscaling efforts.

[ESTCP logo]
ESTCP: DoD Environmental Security Technology Certification Program
In 2023, the NOAA-GFDL ESD team will begin a three year, multi-institutional project funded by DOD ESTCP.  The project’s title is Fit for Purpose? An Integrative Assessment of State-of-the-Science Downscaling Methods for DoD Infrastructure Planning. under the topic “Climate Model Comparative Assessment for DoD Infrastructure Applications.” [Link to announcement of selection]. The GFDL ESD Team will be partnering with researchers from NCAR’s computation hydrology team, Cornell University, and Mitre Corporation.

In 2017, the NOAA-GFDL ESD team partnered on a DoD ESTCP-funded project with researchers affiliated with three entities in Boulder, CO; namely NCAR-IMAGe-RISC, NOAA-ESRL PSD, and its CIRES-Univ. of Colorado cooperative institute. That ESTCP project used input data sets derived from regional dynamic climate models run as part of the North American Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (NA-CORDEX) program.

[South Central Climate Science Center logo]
SC CASC: South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center
Established in 2012, the South Central Climate Science Adaptation Center (SC CASC, formerly SC CSC) is one of eight regional centers created by the US Department of the Interior and managed through the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center (NCCWSC). NOAA GFDL was one of seven institutions that together comprised the Consortium of the SC CSC for the first seven years of the program. The Consortium provides scientific information, tools, and techniques that resource managers and others can use to translate science into management decisions. Much of GFDL’s SC CSC-related efforts focused on statistical downscaling topics, in collaboration with colleagues at Texas Tech University (TTU) and the University of Oklahoma (OU).  Our participation in the SC CASC ended in 2019.

[NCPP logo]
NCPP: National Climate Predictions & Projections Platform
The NCPP effort was a collaboration of climate scientists, modelers, downscalers, and practitioners (i.e., those who use downscaled climate data for decision-support purposes). It aimed to develop an end-to-end system to connect basic climate data and climate knowledge with use in real-world applications. Toward this end, the GFDL Perfect Model test framework was adopted as one of the NCPP’s protocols. Four members of GFDL’s statistical downscaling team attended the NCPP’s August 2013 Quantitative Evaluation of Downscaling workshop – a week-long event that raised the visibility of our GFDL-based efforts and provided us with valuable feedback and prospects for enhancing our research capabilities. The NCPP effort ended several years ago, though the important research themes that effort identified continue to be pursued.
  • An overview of the NCPP motivation, goals and plans, including our team’s “Perfect Model” effort, were published as…
    Barsugli, J. J., et al. (2013), The Practitioner’s Dilemma: How to Assess the Credibility of Downscaled Climate Projections, Eos Trans.AGU, 94(46), 424. [LINK]
  • NOAA CPO MAPP Webinar on NCPP. (Nov 2013)