Climate Change and Climatic Variability in Latin America and the Caribbean
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in the region. All such data archives, no matter how small, are potentially useful for this purpose. Databases should be made available to the international scientific community—at best free of charge, but if not, then through collaborative international projects to analyze and exploit them. It is also essential to encourage greater involvement by LAC region scientists in climate analysis at the international level. At present, too many efforts in climate analysis go only as far as the archives of national meteorological services, although a huge effort has been undertaken by the World Meteorological Organization, and in particular the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Climatic Data Center, to push LAC climatologists forward.10 Only by entering the international science arena will regional findings become useful in assisting humankind to mitigate and adapt to anthropogenic climate change and variability. Regional climate change and variability projections for Latin America and the Caribbean based on comprehensive analysis of climate only exist in the form of output from cause-resolution GCMs, with a few exceptions. A strong demand exists for coordinated research exploring a range of possibilities to provide information on regional or local climate change and variability. That could be achieved by enabling concerted actions, with participation from the LAC region as well as developed nations, using the approach applied in such research programs as the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) (Mearns and others 2005) and the Prediction of Regional Scenarios and Uncertainties for Defining European Climate Change Risks and Effects (PRUDENCE), for example (Christensen and others 2007). These initiatives focus on skillful projections of regional climate change and variability, providing not only estimates of changes in mean properties and their variation, but also the scientific knowledge to permit a quantifiable assessment of the uncertainties associated with the projections.
Notes 1. A1F1 describes a high-emission scenario with high economic growth, where global population peaks around 9 billion in 2050 and declines to about 7 billion by 2100, with continued high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting in cumulative emissions from 1990 until 2100 of 2,182 GtC. B1, in contrast, describes a low-emission scenario, with a similar development in population figures, also with high economic growth, but where the gains of the economic growth to a large extent are invested in improved efficiency of