Treatment of Uncertainty in Climate Change Assessments

• Activity Number: 212
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Monday, August 4, 2014 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: ASA Advisory Committee on Climate Change Policy
• Author(s): Kerry Emanuel*+ and Leonard A. Smith*+ and Andrew R. Solow*+ and Daniel Schrag*+
• Companies: Massachusetts Institute of Technology and London School of Economics and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Harvard University
• Keywords: Uncertainty analysis ; Climate change projections

Abstract

A panel discussion of the treatment of uncertainty in climate change including panelists from the fields of atmospheric sciences, economics, and statistics. Although uncertainty analysis plays a critical role in climate change assessments, such as the current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) and the U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA), the involvement of statisticians remains limited. All the panelists have been involved in the IPCC AR5 and/or NCA. Issues to be discussed include how to encourage more extensive involvement of statisticians in future climate change assessments.