Climate variations and New Zealand agriculture the CLIMPACTS system and issues of spatial and temporal scale

Internationally and nationally, New Zealand has a growing requirement to assess and report on the possible effects of climate change. In association with this requirement, the science of climate change is rapidly evolving requiring a capacity for rapid reassessment of effects to take account of scientific advances. Consequently, past assessment methods, which have not been computationally efficient, nor easily repeated, are becoming outdated. To address this gap, an integrated assessment model (IAM), the CLIMPACTS system, has been developed for New Zealand. The CLIMPACTS system has been developed to provide flexibility in application, to be easily updated to take account of scientific advances, and capable of providing information in a manner that is relevant to policymakers. In order to be relevant in New Zealand, it has been necessary to account for different scales of assessment, nationally, at specific sites, and regionally. Nationally, the focus is on spatial applications (e.g., changes in areas of suitability), whereas at sites, the focus is on temporal applications (e.g., changes in risk). The regional capacity in the CLIMPACTS system has required an integration of spatial and temporal applications. This paper describes briefly the capability that has been developed at these different scales of assessment, with brief examples for each. The CLIMPACTS system has enhanced New Zealand's capability to examine environmental sensitivities to climate change, as a basis for better informed policy decisions. Importantly, it is an evolving platform that can be readily extended to other sectors and updated, for example, to account for the effects of internationally agreed greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.