Office of the
State Climatologist - Jan Curtis
Voice: (307) 766-6659 ● Fax: (307) 766-3785
http://www.wrds.uwyo.edu/wrds/wsc/wsc.html
stateclim@wrds.uwyo.edu
Policy
Statement on Climate Variability and Change
By the American Association of State Climatologists (AASC)*
This statement provides the perspective of the AASC on issues of climate
variability and change. Since the AASC members work directly with users of
climate information at the local, state and regional levels, it is uniquely
able to put global climate issues into the local perspective needed by the
users of climate information. Our conclusions are as follows:
1. Past climate is a useful guide to the future -
Assessing past climate conditions provides a very effective analysis tool to
assess societal and environmental vulnerability to future climate, regardless
of the extent the future climate is altered by human activity. Our current and
future vulnerability, however, will be different than in the past, even if
climate were not to change, because society and the environment change as well.
Decision makers need assessments of how climate vulnerability has changed.
2. Climate prediction is complex with many
uncertainties - The AASC recognizes climate prediction is an extremely
difficult undertaking. For time scales of a decade or more, understanding the
empirical accuracy of such predictions - called "verification" - is
simply impossible, since we have to wait a decade or longer to assess the
accuracy of the forecasts.
Climate prediction is difficult because it involves
complex, nonlinear interactions among all components of the earth's environmental
system. These components include the oceans, land, lakes, and continental ice
sheets, and involve physical, biological, and chemical processes. The
complicated feedbacks and forcings within the climate
system are the reasons for the difficulty in accurately predicting the future
climate. The AASC recognizes that human activities have an influence on the
climate system. Such activities, however, are not limited to greenhouse gas
forcing and include changing land use and sulfate emissions, which further
complicates the issue of climate prediction. Furthermore, climate predictions
have not demonstrated skill in projecting future variability and changes in
such important climate conditions as growing season, drought, flood-producing
rainfall, heat waves, tropical cyclones and winter storms. These are the type
of events that have a more significant impact on society than annual average
global temperature trends.
3. Policy responses to climate variability and change
should be flexible and sensible - The difficulty of prediction and the
impossibility of verification of predictions decades into the future are
important factors that allow for competing views of the long-term climate
future. Therefore, the AASC recommends that policies related to long-term
climate not be based on particular predictions, but instead should focus on
policy alternatives that make sense for a wide range of plausible climatic
conditions regardless of future climate. Climate is always changing on a
variety of time scales and being prepared for the consequences of this
variability is a wise policy.
4. In their interactions with users of climate
information, AASC members recognize that the nation's climate policies must
involve much more than discussions of alternative energy policies - Climate has
a profound effect on sectors such as energy supply and demand, agriculture,
insurance, water supply and quality, ecosystem management and the impacts of
natural disasters. Whatever policies are promulgated with respect to energy, it
is imperative that policy makers recognize that climate - its variability and
change - has a broad impact on society. The policy responses should also be
broad.
Thus, to address the issues of climate variability and
change, modernizing and maintaining high quality long-term climate data must be
a high priority in order to permit careful monitoring. With the rapid
dissemination of these data, State Climate Offices, as well as the
Finally, ongoing political debate about global energy
policy should not stand in the way of common sense action to reduce societal
and environmental vulnerabilities to climate variability and change.
Considerable potential exists to improve policies related to climate; the AASC
is working to turn that potential into reality.
* The American Association of State Climatologists
(AASC) is the professional organization of State Climatologists of the
The
Wyoming
Water Development Commission
WEBMASTER: stateclim@wrds.uwyo.edu
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