Prashant Goswami and K V Ramesh
Accepted Abstracts: Hydrol Current Res
Climate change is expected to have large impacts on regional hydrological cycles, affecting spatio-temporal distributions of water availability and water sustainability. A major requirement, therefore, is reliable estimates and assessments for pro-active planning, adaptation and mitigation. A critical input for such assessment is reliable projections at regional scales. However, assessing reliability of projections based on current data is both a conceptual and a methodological challenge. A major issue, given the large uncertainties in climate simulations, is the choice of an ensemble for enhanced reliability. A methodology is presented for assessment of impact of climate change based on different climate ensembles like event-based and trend-based ensembles as well as conventional all-model ensemble based on IPCC projections; these ensembles highlight the spread in projections and the need for quantitative estimates of reliability. We consider the continental Indian monsoon as an example and apply a hierarchical approach for assessing reliability, using the accuracy in simulating the historical trend as the primary criterion. The assessments based on trend-based or event-based ensemble are appreciably different from those based on a conventional all-model ensemble. While the scope has increased in CMIP5, there is essentially no improvement in skill in projections since CMIP3 in terms of reliability (confidence). Thus, it may be necessary to consider acceptable models for specific assessment rather than simple ensemble. While trend-based ensembles can provide enhanced reliability, the eventbased ensemble can provide more accurate assessment of impacts of climate extremes for designing management practices.
Prashant Goswami obtained his PhD in Theoretical and Mathematical physics from IISc, Bangalore; before talking up research in atmosphere, climate and multidisciplinary modeling. He is the recipient of prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Earth Science for the year 2001. He leads the group on Climate and Environmental Modelling at C-MMACS. He had been a Lead Author (Working Group I, Chapter 14) of recently concluded IPCC Assessment Report 5. He has more than 60 publications in reputed SCI journals and has many national and international collaborative programmes; he also coordinates a national data infrastructure termed Climate Observation and Modelling Network.
Hydrology: Current Research received 2843 citations as per Google Scholar report
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