The Development of Climate Scenarios for the National Climate Assessment

An overview of scenarios development for the Third National Climate Assessment (NCA3) will be presented. A decision was made early on that the CMIP3 suites of climate model simulations would form the foundation for climate scenarios for the NCA3. However, the CMIP5 suite became available during the latter stages of NCA3 development and basic analyses of these simulations were also included. Since the release of NCA3, a report comparing CMIP3 and CMIP5 simulations was produced as a part of the NOAA contribution to the NCA process. Results from that report will also be presented. Lastly, climate scenarios options for the Fourth NCA (NCA4) and the Sustained Assessment process are now being considered and will be discussed.