Forecasting Local Climate for Policy Analysis: A Pilot Application for Ethiopia

23 Pages Posted: 20 Apr 2016

See all articles by Brian Blankespoor

Brian Blankespoor

World Bank - Development Research Group (DECRG)

Kiran Dev Pandey

World Bank

David Wheeler

World Bank - Policy Research Department

Date Written: July 1, 2009

Abstract

This paper describes an approach to forecasting future climate at the local level using historical weather station and satellite data and future projections of climate data from global climate models (GCMs) that is easily understandable by policymakers and planners. It describes an approach to synthesize the myriad climate projections, often with conflicting messages, into an easily-interpreted set of graphical displays that summarizes the basic implications of the ensemble of available climate models. The method described in the paper can be applied to publicly-available data for any country and for any number of climate models. It does not depend on geographic scale and can be applied at the subnational, national, or regional level. The paper illustrates the results for future climate for Ethiopia using future climate scenarios projects by 8 global climate models. The graphical displays of nine possible future climate regimes (average temperature, precipitation and their seasonal distribution) for each grid-cell about 50km X 50 km). It also provides the probability associated with each of the nine-climate regimes.

Keywords: Science of Climate Change, Climate Change Mitigation and Green House Gases, Global Environment Facility, Water Conservation, Information Security & Privacy

Suggested Citation

Blankespoor, Brian and Pandey, Kiran and Wheeler, David, Forecasting Local Climate for Policy Analysis: A Pilot Application for Ethiopia (July 1, 2009). World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 5004, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1437956

Brian Blankespoor (Contact Author)

World Bank - Development Research Group (DECRG) ( email )

1818 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20433
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/site/decrgbrianblankespoor/

Kiran Pandey

World Bank ( email )

1818 H Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20433
United States

David Wheeler

World Bank - Policy Research Department ( email )

1818 H Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20433
United States

HOME PAGE: http://econ.worldbank.org/staff/dwheeler

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