Understanding climate change on global and continental scales is important, but impacts are felt and decisions are made on smaller scales. A major focus of our group’s work is to understand climate change on the regional scales that are relevant to climate adaptation questions.
Our work in this area includes developing innovative methods for downscaling information from global climate models so that we can create fine-spatial-resolution projections of future climate. To date, we have completed downscaling studies over the greater Los Angeles area and California’s Sierra Nevada, assessing changes to key aspects of climate. In these projects, we have worked to ensure that our projections account for important local climate processes, achieving greater physical realism than if these processes were not included.