Joint Task Team on Responsible Data Use

+

The Regional Information for Society (RIfS) is launching a new task team dedicated to the responsible use of climate data. The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) is currently the basis of a large number of efforts to plan for future climate on scales that are not always well-resolved in GCMs, often via derived products that seek to add value regarding additional processes. Given the well-established role of CMIP data, and derived products, to inform decisions at the regional scale, this task team seeks to reduce data misuse by developing recommendations for better means of documenting the limitations of CMIP model outputs for various key applications.

Expected outcomes

• Identify a first set of limitations that can be communicated.
• Identify options for how appropriate uses and potential for misuse can be communicated to the impact and adaptation communities.
• Provide recommendations, including preferred options, to the CMIP Panel and RIfS Scientific Steering Group (SSG).
• Establish a preliminary framework to develop a more comprehensive response to this problem.

The team is tasked to:

• Gather information on some of the more common or representative ways that CMIP data is being used “downstream” with a focus on supporting users from under-resourced regions.
• Reach out to modeling centers to understand how they understand the appropriate uses of a range of model output variables, and of entire model components.
• Develop options for reporting on fitness-for-purpose in metadata and/or via other mechanisms at varying levels of detail, in coordination with the Model Documentation Task Team.
• Determine, through user engagement, the optimal communication methods and channels for appropriate use information to users.

Members

Please direct your questions to any task team members, or the RIfS IPO: admin@wcrp-rifs.org