Building a Climate Model Downscaling Community of Practice for the United States

While the international climate modeling community is organized and has a number of uniform reporting and evaluation standards through the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), the climate model downscaling community, even for the United States, has not developed such standards, due to the many additional scientific and application considerations required to simultaneously evaluate both climate models and downscaling efforts. We report on a nascent effort borne out of the November 14-16, 2023 Understanding Decision Relevant Climate Data Products Workshop (UDRCDP) in Berkeley, California that recognized the need for an active Community of Practice for the United States

Community of practice activation activities are myriad. Discussions are underway focused on statistical and dynamical downscaling of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project - Phase 6 (CMIP6) over the United States for the 21st Century. These discussions are focused on the following: (1) to ensure that both statistical and dynamical climate model downscaling products are compliant with Climate and Forecast (CF) standards, (2) to develop cyberinfrastructure to provide these products to scientists and practitioners, and (3) to scope out efforts to provide additional support climate model downscaling of areas in the United States with limited downscaling training data, such as those outside of the Conterminous United States.