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Abstracts

“Development of a Decision Support Aid System Connecting Climate Model Downscaling and DoD Infrastructure” by Dr. Gabriele Villarini (CR22-7335)

While Department of Defense (DoD) infrastructure is no stranger to extremes, recent events have been unprecedented, with climate change acting as a growing risk multiplier. To assess the level of exposure of DoD installations to extreme hydroclimatological events, site-specific climate information is needed. One way to bridge the scale gap from coarse-resolution global climate models (GCMs) to sites is climate downscaling, which makes the climate information more suitable for impact assessment at the facility scale. But downscaling GCMs is beset by numerous challenges and sources of uncertainty and was not designed with specific infrastructure planning and design needs in mind. Our work focuses on the impact of climate change on several hazards affecting DoD installations. We explore a range of credible future scenarios, and compare the state-of-the-science in dynamical and statistical downscaling of impact-relevant variables. Moreover, we examine the sensitivity of the results to our use of different observational datasets. These findings are providing insights into the sources of uncertainty that arise from post-processing GCM datasets and on the approaches that are best suited to understand climate change impacts on the physical installation and the DoD mission.

“Fit for Purpose? An Integrative Assessment of State-of-the-Science Downscaling Methods for DoD Infrastructure Planning” by Dr. Flavio Lehner (CR22-7256)

DoD faces diverse climate risks in the U.S., Alaska, and Hawaii, including extreme precipitation and temperature changes. Evaluating these risks relies on global climate models downscaled using various methods, resulting in a potentially paralyzing amount of data for practitioners to work with. The lack of a formal assessment of downscaling methods' suitability hampers DoD's adaptation planning, potentially misrepresenting climate threats. This project aims to develop a decision support tool for DoD, summarizing downscaling methods' design, performance, and relevance at the example of several DoD installations and associated climate threat variables. The project responds to Congressional directives on climate change, providing support for DoD's climate risk assessments. The modular tool will accommodate future climate science advancements, ensuring its longevity as a guidance resource for using downscaled climate information effectively.

Speaker Biographies

Dr. Gabriele Villarini is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and in the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University where his research interests focus on flood hydrology, extreme events, hydroclimatology, and climate predictions and projections. He has received several national and international awards, including the Hydrological Sciences Outstanding Young Scientist Award by the European Geosciences Union (2013), and the James B. Macelwane Medal by the American Geophysical Union (2016). Dr. Villarini has published over 240 peer-reviewed papers, including articles in Nature, Science, Nature Climate Change, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the Co-Editor-in-Chief for Advances in Water Resources. He received his master’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Rome “La Sapienza,” and his doctoral degree in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Iowa. He also received an Executive MBA from the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa.

Dr. Flavio Lehner is an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. He is also affiliated with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and the U.S.-based non-profit organization Polar Bears International. Dr. Lehner serves as a co-principal investigator of projects funded by SERDP, ESTCP, the National Science Foundation, DOE, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He has authored and co-authored over 80 peer-reviewed papers on a range of climate science-related topics, from fundamentals of atmospheric and oceanic variability to applied studies on the impact of climate change on water resources or wildfire risk. He serves as an Associate Editor of AGU’s Earth’s Future journal and has contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Assessment Reports and the latest U.S. National Climate Assessment. Dr. Flavio received bachelor’s degree in geography/climatology from the University of Basel and his master’s and doctoral degrees in climate science from the University of Bern.