About this dashboard

Interactive explorer over Central Asia climate refugia metrics derived from CCLM6-0/MPI-ESM1-2-HR dynamically downscaled climate surfaces at 250 m, further downscaled using GIDS (Gradient + Inverse Distance Squared) to the study DEM. Covers approximately 30–57°N, 45–96°E under three CMIP6 SSP scenarios.

Methods (summary)

We define a 1984–2014 historical baseline and compute summer (JJAS) heatwave exposure using a Gaussian-closure proxy calibrated against GHCN-D station observations. Four component indices are derived:

• RI Daytime Refugia Index — heatwave frequency and warming (Tmax)
• NRI Night Refugia Index — warm-night frequency and warming (Tmin)
• PRI Precipitation Refugia Index — drought frequency and precipitation change
• CRI Climate Refugia Index — equal-weight composite of RI, NRI, and PRI

Robust Persistence is the geometric mean of CRI across all 24 scenario–decade combinations (3 SSPs × 8 decades), identifying locations that retain high refugia value regardless of emissions pathway.

Model

Driving GCM: MPI-ESM1-2-HR (CMIP6). Regional downscaling: CCLM6-0 from PIK (~25 km). Statistical downscaling to 250 m: GIDS with Copernicus GLO-30 250 m DEM. Scenarios: SSP1-2.6, SSP3-7.0, SSP5-8.5.

Citation

Data & code

Derived data products supporting the findings of this study — including CRI maps for all three SSP scenarios, the Robust Persistence Index, component indices (RI, NRI, PRI), and country-level summary tables — are publicly available at Zenodo (DOI pending deposit). Key rasters are also accessible via the bulk download links in the sidebar; individual layer GeoTIFFs are available via the Download GeoTIFF button per layer. All rasters are ESRI:102025 (Asia North Albers Equal Area Conic) at 250 m resolution.

The full archive of terrain-informed downscaled climate surfaces (~637 GB; bias-corrected CCLM6-0/MPI-ESM1-2-HR grids at 250 m) is archived on Wasabi cloud storage and available upon request: evebohnett@ufl.edu. Analysis code will be made available upon publication.