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Abstract Cities are concentrators of complex, multi‐sectoral interactions. As keystones in the interconnected human‐Earth system, cities have an outsized impact on the Earth system. We describe a multi‐lens framework for organizing our understanding of the complexity of urban systems and scientific research on urban systems, which may be useful for natural system scientists exploring the ways their work can be made more actionable. We then describe four critical dimensions along which improvements are needed to advance the urban research that addresses urgent climate challenges: (a) solutions‐oriented research, (b) equity‐centered assessments which rely on fine‐scale human and ecological data, (c) co‐production of knowledge, and (d) better integration of human and natural systems occurring through theory, observation, and modeling. 

Abstract Climate change and global urbanization have often been anticipated to increase future population exposure (frequency and intensity) to extreme weather over the coming decades. Here we examine how changes in urban land extent, population, and climate will respectively and collectively affect spatial patterns of future population exposures to climate extremes (including hot days, cold days, heavy rainfalls, and severe thunderstorm environments) across the continental U.S. at the end of the 21st century. Different from common impressions, we find that urban land patterns can sometimes reduce rather than increase population exposures to climate extremes, even heat extremes, and that spatial patterns instead of total quantities of urban land are more influential to population exposures. Our findings lead to preliminary suggestions for embedding long-term climate resilience in urban and regional land-use system designs, and strongly motivate searches for optimal spatial urban land patterns that can robustly moderate population exposures to climate extremes throughout the 21st century. 

We describe the I-WRF project for the NSF Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation program, which provides a framework for application containers that allow the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) software and accompanying MET and METplus validation software to be run on a wide range of resources with minimal installation requirements. I-WRF will support three major science use cases that quantify impacts of environmental or human developments together with climate change on critical outcomes. I-WRF is also intended to facilitate outreach by making it easier to provide training and demonstrations to build understanding and interest for new potential atmospheric scientists. 

BackgroundWildfire simultaneity affects the availability and distribution of resources for fire management: multiple small fires require more resources to fight than one large fire does. AimsThe aim of this study was to project the effects of climate change on simultaneous large wildfires in the Western USA, regionalised by administrative divisions used for wildfire management. MethodsWe modelled historical wildfire simultaneity as a function of selected fire indexes using generalised linear models trained on observed climate and fire data from 1984 to 2016. We then applied these models to regional climate model simulations of the 21st century from the NA-CORDEX data archive. Key resultsThe results project increases in the number of simultaneous 1000+ acre (4+ km2) fires in every part of the Western USA at multiple return periods. These increases are more pronounced at higher levels of simultaneity, especially in the Northern Rockies region, which shows dramatic increases in the recurrence of high return levels. ConclusionsIn all regions, the models project a longer season of high simultaneity, with a slightly earlier start and notably later end. These changes would negatively impact the effectiveness of fire response. ImplicationsBecause firefighting decisions about resource distribution, pre-positioning, and suppression strategies consider simultaneity as a factor, these results underscore the importance of potential changes in simultaneity for fire management decision-making. 

Abstract In this paper we consider some questions surrounding whether or not regional climate models “add value,” a controversial issue in climate science today. We highlight some objections frequently made about regional climate models both within and outside the community of modelers, including several claims that regional climate models do not “add value.” We show that there are a number of issues involved in the latter claims, the primary ones centering on the fact that different research questions are being pursued by the modelers making the complaints against regional climate models. Further issues focus on historical deficiencies of particular—but not generalizable—failures of individual regional models. We provide tools to sort out these different research questions and particular failures, and to improve communication and understanding surrounding added value in climate modeling and philosophy of climate science.