April 2009: The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), a research center of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), released a Working Paper titled “Climate Scenarios: What We Need to Know and How to Generate Them.” The paper provides an overview of the role of climate scenarios in adaptation planning and outlines what should be considered when they are generated and used.

It addresses questions commonly faced by non-climatologists who want to apply climate scenarios for adaptation planning, including: types of climate and emission scenarios; data and information needs, sources and processing; how to address uncertainty; and using climate models in assessing extreme events. The paper concludes, among other things, that capacity building is needed to address the challenge of communicating climate scenario modeling to policy makers and adaptation planners. [The working paper] [Summary]