Empirical‐statistical downscaling in climate modeling

Research into possible impacts of a climate change requires descriptions of local and regional climate. For instance, the local and regional aspect of a climate change is stressed in the U.S. Strategic Plan for the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) (http://www.climate‐science.gov/Library/stratplan2003/default.htm). Global climate models (GCMs) are important tools for studying climate change and making projections for the future. Although GCMs provide realistic representations of large‐scale aspects of climate, they generally do not give good descriptions of the local and regional scales. It is nevertheless possible to relate large‐scale climatic features to smaller spatial scales.