Use of Climate Information for Decision-Making and Impacts Research: State of Our Understanding

Abstract

Much of human society and its infrastructure has been designed and built on a key assumption: that future climate conditions at any given location including average temperature, precipitation, sea level, and the frequency and intensity of extreme events will be similar to those experienced in the past. In scientific and engineering terms, this assumption can be termed stationarity. This assumption underlies infrastructure design and maintenance, emergency response management, and long-term investment and planning, in which both past decisions and future plans rely on historical records of heat and cold, drought and flood, hurricanes and storm surges, or other aspects of long-term climate.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2016
Accession Number
AD1029525

Entities

People

  • Christoper L. Castro
  • Donald Wuebbles
  • Katharine Hayhoe
  • Linda Mearns
  • Rao Kotamarthi

Organizations

  • Argonne National Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Climate Change
  • Geography
  • Greenhouse Effect
  • Meteorology
  • Ridges
  • Sea Level Rise
  • Storm Surges
  • Terrain
  • Topography

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Climatology
  • Emergency Management and Homeland Security.
  • Systems Analysis and Design