Climate change in SE Asia

Climate change in SE Asia

You have been presented with a range of simulations of future climate change and your
task is to choose an interesting scientific question and present an analysis. You cannot
be exhaustive so focus on key results.
You should discuss the reliability of the model and the uncertainty associated with the
predictions. For the purposes of this assessment, focus only on the physical climate model
output. Avoid the temptation to elaborate on the potential impacts for society etc.
Plot time series and maps of climate fields as relevant to your analysis – it’s up to you to
decide what you need to look at! If taking differences between plots, please be careful to
choose the appropriate experiments to compare, i.e. the correct “control” climate.
What results do you find? Here are some questions to think about:
• Has the climate warmed/cooled in your experiment compared to the control? Why?
• Are there regional differences in the climate change you observe?
• Are there changes in seasonality of different regions?
• Has the interannual climate variation changed?
• Are the results what you expected? If not, why do they differ?
Reminder: save your key plots so you can include them in your report.
Write a 4-side Nature style report of the model. As in Nature, you should include a
200 word introduction or abstract and you are allowed four figures/tables to support
your analysis.
? Text should be a minimum 11pt font and the page margins should be at least 2cm.
? The referencing does not need to follow the numbered system used in Nature.
? You do not need to write in 2 columns.
? You should include a title specific to your topic.
? As the simulations you will analyse are already published, you do not need to include
more than 1 sentence on methods (unless you have done something separately from
the BRIDGE webpages in which case you should describe this fully).
? Do not replicate results from published sources (e.g., Irvine et al., Ridgwell et al.)
? You must fit the references within the 4 pages but you can compress these by omitting
the titles and if there are more than 2 authors you can write et al.
? Your figures may include panels (i.e. 1 figure with e.g. 2+ maps) but this must be
reasonable and not just used to include extra figures.
? 4 figures plus tables means e.g. 3 figures and 1 table!
Some notes based work in previous years:
There is a generic structure for how to think about this assignment. You are looking at a
set of climate simulations. These simulations differ from each other in some modification of
parameters (e.g. RCP or crop albedo values etc). You can then compare these simulations
(with and without the imposed change) to get an idea of the climate response. This
response will affect many variables within the model (temperature, precipitation,
evaporation winds, ocean currents, soil moisture, humidity, clouds etc). Your task is to
evaluate the resultant climate response, to relate them to the imposed parameters, and
finally to evaluate the response in the wider context of scientific literature of modelling or
observations of the climate system.