Climate Knowledge Integration Centers (CKIC)

The CKIC concept is designed to bridge the gap in communication of climate information between scientists and users. That gap has to be closed if the needs of society for planning and adapting to climate change are to be serviced. Bringing together experts from multiple disciplines to collaborate with climate experts will help to close this information gap while working through the impacts of climate forecasts and uncertainty quantification.

CKICs are envisioned to provide the infrastructure for climate change data acquisition, integration and management, develop climate change projections and impact assessments with uncertainty quantification tailored to user needs. They will also deliver decision support interfaces to assist planners and decision makers in their considerations of climate adaptation and mitigation. The impact parameters consider items of interest to customers such as heating degree days (HDD) and cooling degree days (CDD) for energy use planning, precipitation for agriculture and hydrology applications, and projections for various extreme climatological events.

Because climate change, impacts and user needs vary geographically, the CKIC concept envisions a network of regional Centers. Regional Centers would share much common infrastructure, but would be optimized for responsiveness to region-specific needs. This paper will discuss the concept and vision for CKICs