Expert Judgment for Climate Change Adaptation

Thompson, Erica; Frigg, Roman; Helgeson, Casey

doi:10.1086/687942

Cited by 37 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Risbey and O'Kane 2011). Thompson et al (2016) argue that for local climate change decision support, direct climate model outputs can be misleading. Our approach delivers a better characterisation of the sources of knowledge and uncertainty in regional climate change projections by: (1) having experts interpret climate model results, observations and theory, whilst developing process-based narratives; and (2) focusing on physically plausible evolutions of future regional climate, guided by understanding of climate processes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the application of expert elicitation to regional climate change has largely been undocumented, underspecified or incipient with a few exceptions (Mearns et al 2017, Risbey et al 2002. Given the large uncertainties in projecting regional and local climate change, Thompson et al (2016) have argued that subjective expert judgment should play a central role in the provision of such information to support adaptation planning and decision-making.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Building narratives to characterise uncertainty in regional climate change through expert elicitation

Dessai

Bhave

Birch

et al. 2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Knowledge about regional and local climate change can inform climate risk assessments and adaptation decisions. However, estimates of future precipitation change at the regional and local level are deeply uncertain for many parts of the world. A novel methodology was developed that uses climate processes and expert elicitation to build narratives of future regional precipitation change. The narratives qualitatively describe physically plausible evolutions of future regional climate substantiated by climate processes. This method is applied to the Indian Summer Monsoon, focusing on the Cauvery River Basin in Karnataka, Southern India. Six climate narratives are constructed as a function of two drivers prioritised by the experts: moisture availability over the Arabian Sea and strength of the low-level westerly flow. The narratives describe how future precipitation could change until the 2050s and which climate processes and anthropogenic factors could influence this evolution. Analysis using observed (Global Precipitation Climatology Centre) and re-analysis (ERA20 and Interim) data shows the experts' judgement on key drivers fits well with empirical relationships. The expert elicited drivers explain 70% of the variance in peak monsoon precipitation (July and August) over the Western Ghats between 1979. The study shows that through expert elicitation, process-based narratives enable climate scientists to characterise and communicate elements of deep uncertainty in future precipitation change. Expert judgment techniques need be more widely applied to characterise uncertainty in regional and local climate change.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building narratives to characterise uncertainty in regional climate change through expert elicitation

Dessai

Bhave

Birch

et al. 2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…Uncertainty about the evolution of the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) under climate change is high (Turner & Annamalai, ) so instead of using projections from climate models we used a suite of climate narratives derived from an expert‐elicitation procedure as part of a complementary research exercise (Dessai et al, ) (see also Thompson et al, ). These narratives describe plausible changes in ISM precipitation in the Western Ghats region of the CRBK.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water Resource Planning Under Future Climate and Socioeconomic Uncertainty in the Cauvery River Basin in Karnataka, India

Bhave

Conway

Dessai

et al. 2018

Water Resources Research

110

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Decision‐Making Under Uncertainty (DMUU) approaches have been less utilized in developing countries than developed countries for water resources contexts. High climate vulnerability and rapid socioeconomic change often characterize developing country contexts, making DMUU approaches relevant. We develop an iterative multi‐method DMUU approach, including scenario generation, coproduction with stakeholders and water resources modeling. We apply this approach to explore the robustness of adaptation options and pathways against future climate and socioeconomic uncertainties in the Cauvery River Basin in Karnataka, India. A water resources model is calibrated and validated satisfactorily using observed streamflow. Plausible future changes in Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) precipitation and water demand are used to drive simulations of water resources from 2021 to 2055. Two stakeholder‐identified decision‐critical metrics are examined: a basin‐wide metric comprising legal instream flow requirements for the downstream state of Tamil Nadu, and a local metric comprising water supply reliability to Bangalore city. In model simulations, the ability to satisfy these performance metrics without adaptation is reduced under almost all scenarios. Implementing adaptation options can partially offset the negative impacts of change. Sequencing of options according to stakeholder priorities into Adaptation Pathways affects metric satisfaction. Early focus on agricultural demand management improves the robustness of pathways but trade‐offs emerge between intrabasin and basin‐wide water availability. We demonstrate that the fine balance between water availability and demand is vulnerable to future changes and uncertainty. Despite current and long‐term planning challenges, stakeholders in developing countries may engage meaningfully in coproduction approaches for adaptation decision‐making under deep uncertainty.

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“…Nevertheless, the point is that analytical discretion cannot simply be assumed to exist within regulatory science, suggesting that the discussions of “moral obligations” that are central to AfIR rather miss the point. Even in the absence of (binding) methodological guidelines, conventions may emerge autonomously and wield significant normative force (Franklin, ; Saltelli et al., ; Thompson, Frigg, & Helgeson, ). Nevertheless, this rebuttal only suggests that analytical degrees of freedom are more limited than supposed by proponents of the AfIR, rather than nonexistent.…”

Section: Underdetermination the Afir And Prominent Rebuttalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Null Hypothesis Testing ≠ Scientific Inference: A Critique of the Shaky Premise at the Heart of the Science and Values Debate, and a Defense of Value‐Neutral Risk Assessment

MacGillivray¹

2019

Risk Analysis

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Many philosophers and statisticians argue that risk assessors are morally obligated to evaluate the probabilities and consequences of methodological error, and to base their decisions of whether to adopt a given parameter value, model, or hypothesis on those considerations. This argument is couched within the rubric of null hypothesis testing, which I suggest is a poor descriptive and normative model for risk assessment. Risk regulation is not primarily concerned with evaluating the probability of data conditional upon the null hypothesis, but rather with measuring risks, estimating the consequences of available courses of action and inaction, formally characterizing uncertainty, and deciding what to do based upon explicit values and decision criteria. In turn, I defend an ideal of value‐neutrality, whereby the core inferential tasks of risk assessment—such as weighing evidence, estimating parameters, and model selection—should be guided by the aim of correspondence to reality. This is not to say that value judgments be damned, but rather that they should be accounted for within a structured approach to decision analysis, rather than embedded within risk assessment in an informal manner.

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Expert Judgment for Climate Change Adaptation

Cited by 37 publications

References 19 publications

Building narratives to characterise uncertainty in regional climate change through expert elicitation

Building narratives to characterise uncertainty in regional climate change through expert elicitation

Water Resource Planning Under Future Climate and Socioeconomic Uncertainty in the Cauvery River Basin in Karnataka, India

Null Hypothesis Testing ≠ Scientific Inference: A Critique of the Shaky Premise at the Heart of the Science and Values Debate, and a Defense of Value‐Neutral Risk Assessment

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