STITCHES: a comprehensive option for Earth System Model emulation for impacts research, and its implications for designing future ESM scenario experiments

Emulators of Earth System Model (ESM) outputs have the potential to become a powerful tool for the impacts research community. If successful in emulating the needed variables at the required spatial and temporal resolution, they can supply impact model(er)s with the inputs necessary to explore how future water, energy, economic, and land systems evolve under a wide range of future scenarios. This complements the availability of ESM output currently limited to a small number of future scenarios - due to the computational costs of running fully coupled climate models - since emulators are by construction computationally efficient. STITCHES is an open-source climate emulator that can produce time series of multiple ESM variables, at the ESM original temporal and spatial resolution, by recombining existing model output into new scenarios on the basis of the scenario global temperature trajectory. In this talk, we will focus on how STITCHES can be used to explore new scenarios by filling in the space between existing scenarios. We will also discuss how insights from emulators such as STITCHES may be used to inform climate modeling centers on where to prioritize resources in future scenario simulations.