10 February 2009: The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) workshop on “Evaluating and Improving Regional Climate Projections” was held from 11-13 February 2009, in Toulouse, France, to discuss the way forward in producing climate information on regional, in addition to global, scales. The WCRP, sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization, the International Council for Science and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, aims to improve climate predictions and our understanding of human influence on climate through observations and modeling of the Earth system and the policy relevant assessment of climate conditions.

Workshop participants summarized the current knowledge on various downscaling methods and discussed the extent to which these methods address the needs of the user community. Another focus of the workshop was the possibility of a coordinated international activity, under the WCRP, that would develop a framework on regional climate downscaling. [Workshop Information]