Climate Change (CC) projections and adaptations to CC

Uncertainties involved in such CC projections

As mentioned briefly in the previous post, certain degree of uncertainties in Climate Change projections is inevitable. Although enhancements are being made continuously, it is difficult to say that there is an absolute and/or objective ways to assess different climate change projection models - so each model has equal probability of getting the projection 'right'. 

     Some scientists suggest that the uncertainties in CC projections should be discussed further in detail, since it can influence massively in the process of forming climate mitigation and adaptation policies around the world. For instance, IPCC Technical Report VI (Bates et al., 2008) discuss about the uncertainties involved in climate projections and how it can impact the results indicated in the report; it includes major uncertainty sources related to hydrological cycle such as limits in climate models produced by spatial resolution and ensemble size achieved by present computer resources (Bates et al., 2008). However, such approach of uncertainty based on ensembles of different GCM projections is often criticised due to lack of rigour in mathematical aspect since the probability function is not conditioned on measured values of the variables (Rougier, 2007 in Taylor et al., 2009). 

     Particularly in climate projections of African region, uncertainty in projected precipitation is a major concern because it can affect the water resources management significantly. Not only the impact of CC on atmospheric water-holding capacity derived from Clausius-Clapeyron relationship and precipitation intensities, but also the socioeconomic changes in land use/cover in the area can influence the uncertainties in future climate projections. Furthermore, many regions in African continent lack sufficient observational data, which is essential in climate model validation process. Hence, there are more diverse factors, which could be considered more extensively in uncertainty discussions of CC projections.