PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Jenna Jorns, Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments (GLISA)
Seven GLISA representatives attended the 2017 American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana: co-director Maria Carmen Lemos, co-director Jeff Andresen, faculty member Richard Rood, program manager Jenna Jorns, climatologist Laura Briley, climatologist Kimberly Channell, and doctoral student Katherine Browne. Together they convened a poster and presentation session, and presented three papers and one poster.
On December 11th, Jorns and Andresen co-chaired a poster and oral presentation session. Entitled “Using New Data and Technology to Better Understand Freshwater and Lake Systems: End-to-End Remote Sensing and Regional Modeling Approaches,” the sessions explored how new data and technology allow for more sophisticated analysis and understanding of complex freshwater systems. Nineteen experts from hydrology, aquatic remote sensing, and climate modeling highlighted their ongoing research in these areas. GLISA convened these sessions to learn more about regional modeling approaches to advance the Great Lakes Ensemble project.
In the oral session, GLISA climatologist Laura Briley opened the session with a presentation, “Representation of the Great Lakes in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) Version 5,” co-authored with Richard Rood. The talk highlighted the GLISA Ensemble project’s effort to evaluate CMIP5 global climate models to assess how well they physically represent the Great Lakes and lake-effects. Briley described the results of GLISA’s investigation.
Also in this oral session, GLISA climatologist Kimberly Channell presented a paper, “Sensitivity of Hydrologic Response to Climate Model Debiasing Procedures,” on behalf of co-authors from the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory and the University of Michigan. The presentation highlighted use of hydrological components from a downscaled climate model (GFDL-CM3/WRF) to obtain future water level forecasts for the Great Lakes. Comparing findings from conventional bias correction methods and a suite of new bias correction procedures, the paper points to discrepancies in future water level forecasts and indicates that forecasts are highly influenced by bias correction methods. Channell concluded that bias correction complicates rather than improves the uncertainty associated with water level forecasts, an important finding for water management and long term planning in the Great Lakes region.
On December 14th, GLISA doctoral student Katherine Browne presented a paper, “Is all coproduction created equal? Understanding drivers and outcomes across different users and forms of engagement,” on behalf of co-author Maria Carmen Lemos. Featured in the session “Science to Action: Toward More Effective Decision Maker Scientist Partnerships,” the paper compared drivers and outcomes of coproduction of climate information among organizations in GLISA’s network of partners. Exploring the different forms of engagement and models of brokering and bridging information among twenty-five cases, Browne emphasized that organizations’ different resources and engagement matter in terms of desirable outcomes of coproduction.
Also on December 14th, faculty member Richard Rood presented a poster, “Lake Representations in Global Climate Models: An End-User Perspective,” which shared GLISA’s experience determining how lakes are categorized in climate models. Rood’s experience indicates that it can take months or longer to receive a defensible answer as to if and how lakes are represented in CMIP5 models. He explores the barriers GLISA identified in the process and strategies to reducing obstacles to obtaining critical information.