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The new national climate change documents of Mexico: what do the regional climate change scenarios represent?

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Abstract

This paper presents a review of the methodology applied for generating the regional climate change scenarios utilized in important National Documents of Mexico, such as the Fourth National Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Fourth National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity and The Economics of Climate Change in Mexico. It is shown that these regional climate change scenarios, which are one of the main inputs to support the assessments presented in these documents, are an example of the erroneous use of statistical downscaling techniques. The arguments presented here imply that the work based on such scenarios should be revised and therefore, these documents are inadequate for supporting national decision- making.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Ciencias de la Atmósfera, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico, D.F., 04510, Mexico

    Francisco Estrada, Benjamín Martínez-López, Cecilia Conde & Carlos Gay-García

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  1. Francisco Estrada
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  2. Benjamín Martínez-López
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  3. Cecilia Conde
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  4. Carlos Gay-García
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Correspondence to Francisco Estrada.

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Estrada, F., Martínez-López, B., Conde, C. et al. The new national climate change documents of Mexico: what do the regional climate change scenarios represent?. Climatic Change 110, 1029–1046 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-011-0100-2

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