chooseGCM: A Toolkit to Select General Circulation Models in R

Area of Science:

• Climate Science
• Ecological Modeling

Background:

• Climate change research relies on projections from General Circulation Models (GCMs).
• Selecting appropriate GCMs for studies, especially Species Distribution Models (SDMs), lacks standardized consensus.
• Using all available GCMs is computationally prohibitive.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a methodological framework for evaluating GCM variability in climate change projections.
• To provide an accessible R package, chooseGCM, for researchers to analyze GCM data.
• To enable robust projections while managing computational resources.

Main Methods:

• Development of an R package implementing a methodological framework for GCM evaluation.
• Utilizing functions for clusterization, correlation, distance, and exploratory data analysis on GCM projections.
• Proof-of-concept application using Species Distribution Models (SDMs).

Main Results:

• The chooseGCM package significantly reduces computation time by over 79% compared to traditional methods.
• Achieved an output correlation greater than 0.9 with the baseline in SDM applications.
• The framework supports a wider range of hardware, enabling robust climate projections.

Conclusions:

• The chooseGCM package offers an efficient and accessible tool for selecting and analyzing GCMs.
• Facilitates more reliable and computationally feasible climate change projections for diverse research fields.
• Empowers researchers, regardless of expertise, to perform robust GCM-based analyses.