Workshop Report:
Session 2
Evaluating Assessments

Session 2 of the workshop was divided into three parallel sessions: climate forcing, climate variability / change, and sensitivity / adaptability. In each of these sessions, speakers reported on updates to recent and ongoing assessments (some CCSP Synthesis and Assessment (S&A) Products were presented in the poster session). Presentations in each session were followed by panel discussions in which panelists, speakers, and participants were asked to reflect on four cross-cutting questions and report back to plenary:

Effectiveness: What makes assessments more or less helpful to their intended users, and what can be done to improve their effectiveness?
Assessment coverage: Given the range of assessments being conducted, what should the priorities be for future assessments?
Process: What is needed to improve the process of framing, conducting, and communicating assessments? How can we improve the connection between basic knowledge generation and applications?
Integrating assessments: What are the opportunities for integrating assessments in the areas of forcing, climate variability/change, and sensitivity/adaptation, as well as for integrating U.S. and international assessments?

Illustrative Examples of Outcomes

Some of the main messages voiced by session participants are summarized below.

Effectiveness

Improve engagement and participation of:

Stakeholders
NGOs
private sector
adaptation research community
climate scientists;

Produce regional assessments;
Put assessment information into accessible forms for users (downscaled and intellectually accessible);

Assessment coverage

Examples of gaps in assessment coverage include:

Climate variability and seasonal-to-interannual prediction (to complement current suite of S&A Products which tends to emphasize climate change);
Regional and local issues (follow-on to U.S. National Assessment);
Users’/stakeholders’ need for digestible answers to first-order questions of local importance.

Methane’s potential role in climate change mitigation assessments should receive more attention;
Many new assessments are not needed; we need to work more effectively to use existing information;
Strategies should be explored that allow flexibility to “adapt as we go”;
There is a need for a comprehensive economic analysis of the impacts of climate variability and change;
Improvements are needed in modeling the relationship between gradual changes and natural variability;
Better management tools and strategies are needed to manage in situations of uncertainty and change.

Integrating assessments

Improve engagement of scientific organizations, especially international organizations (e.g. WCRP, IGBP, IHDP, DIVERSITAS);
Improve coordination across assessment activities, specifically regional, national, and international assessments and the current CCSP S&A Products;
Assessment of adaptation and mitigation options should, in many cases, be considered jointly;
Improve integration across climate variability and change research activities;
Take advantage of existing integration tools, e.g., PCMDI, NIDIS.

Process

A fully transparent process is crucial, especially with the potential for changes to be introduced in the final federal approval process of S&A Products;
Widen participation to reduce the likelihood of small communities writing and reviewing their own work;
Introduce a broader spectrum of knowledge by recruitment of young scientists;
Explicitly address the requirements for availability and documentation of data (how much should be required; formatting requirements, etc.);
Find effective methods to communicate findings to a broader list of recipients (scientists, stakeholders, legislators, general public);
Gather and share information on how S&A Products will be used;
Ensure consistent use of terms;
Scenarios need to be better explained, e.g., in terms of

Their definition (e.g., not a forecast);
Understanding the plausibility, esp. for “business as usual;”
Probabilities;
Uncertainty of demographics, labor productivity, and energy technology.

Stakeholders need to be involved early and often, and they should be involved in framing the questions to help ensure results are used;
Disasters such as Katrina are opportunities for changes in management approaches. The probability that huge re-investments such as this will occasionally occur should be anticipated by the scientific community in its decision support approaches.

Some Additional Points Noted in Sessions

There is a need within CCSP S&A Products for a clear, consistent meaning of decision support;
CCSP needs to develop methods to scale assessments so lessons learned can be transferred;
Forcing scenarios should not be limited to well-mixed greenhouse gases and aerosols; they should also incorporate land cover/land use.
There is a need for a more thorough analysis of past climate, especially the 20th century.

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