Abstracts

Update on Regional Climatology and Adaptation to Climate Change Scientific Work at OURANOS

Alain Bourque
OURANOS
bourque.alain@ouranos.ca

As detailed in the IPCC 2001 Third Assessment Report, climate change is already causing a gradual modification of climatological statistics for many regions of the world. Some impacts and many concerns are becoming more and more widespread has greenhouse gas (GHG) induced global warming of the atmosphere is expected to persist and even accelerate over the next 50 years. While countries try to reduce GHG emissions to minimize the changes in climate, adaptation to unavoidable changes is gradually getting more attention. In this context, Ouranos was initiated from 2001 to 2003 in order to create the multidisciplinary environment needed to address the priority adaptation issues of key socio-economic and environmental sectors in Quebec. To reach its objective, Ouranos created a two fold scientific program: "Climate and hydrological sciences" and "Impacts assessment and adaptation strategies".

This presentation will summarize work and approaches used in both sub-programs in order to develop the decision support tools, which will likely be used by stakeholders to adapt to climate change. It will also illustrate the need to work on many fronts (historical climate data, regional climate scenarios, climate indicators linked to identified priority impacts, vulnerability assessments) in order to capture the complexity and begin to address the uncertainties around adaptation.

2005-04-05