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1. Palutikof
questions as:
Can the climate models accurately simulate the climates of the present day? The
answer to this question helps us to assess the reliability of model estimates of the
future.
Do we see the same trends in climate model output as we do in present-day
observations? Detection is an important area of climate research at present. In
a single region, a similarity between present-day and future trends is most likely
to be a coincidence. However, by comparing trends in many regions, we can
begin to address the detection issue meaningfully. What is the relationship
between natural variability and the climate perturbation produced by changes in
greenhouse gas emissions? In many areas, it is likely that the signal from
greenhouse warming will be small in the context of natural interannual and
decadal variability. This can have important implications for impacts analyses.
6 Conclusions
The major lack of climate data sets is with respect to observed data sets which are:
• quality controlled,
• readily accessible, and
• regularly up-dated.
Achieving these three goals is neither straightforward nor cheap. A major
function of this meeting must be to discuss how the on-going compilation of such
data sets can be achieved.