With Arctic amplification and feedbacks involving the cryosphere, Alaska is experiencing among the highest rates of warming and environmental change. Impacts of these changes on people and infrastructure challenge planners and decision-makers to respond and adapt from individual communities to the regional and pan-Arctic scale. Earth system models (ESM) are a key tool for the climate adaptation science community. Yet, how might practitioners in need of actionable information for northern regions be served by ESM output? To explore this question, we draw on Arctic Alaska case studies as part of our work on the DOE BER-supported Interdisciplinary Research for Arctic Coastal Environments (InteRFACE) and the USGS-supported Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center (AK CASC). Specifically, these examples focus on marine and coastal food security (with sea ice cover a major constraint), design of major infrastructure (in terms of vulnerability to permafrost degradation and extreme weather/climate events), and land use and management (with coastal erosion and permafrost degradation as key stressors).

  We recognize five key attributes of actionable ESM-derived information: (1) key feedbacks and processes, in particular those involving the cryosphere, are captured; (2) some measure of robustness or uncertainty relevant to a specific planning and decision making context is provided; (3) model output is available at or down-scalable to a spatial scale that captures important environmental features and addresses specific information needs; (4) information is available to planners and decision makers for direct incorporation into specific application contexts; (5) for long-range projections, ESM output can be interfaced with findings from participatory scenarios and other forms of knowledge co-production.

  Progress has been made in terms of actionable information derived from ESMs, most notably through the CASCs who have generated downscaled model projections with direct applications for federal (and to a lesser extent Tribal) resource management agencies. This work in turn draws on the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), though with some challenges specific to the Arctic. In the near future, the Simple Cloud-Resolving E3SM Atmosphere Model (SCREAM) holds promise for high-resolution output that captures key processes at a resolution directly applicable in decision-making and planning contexts. At the same time, it is less clear how these developments meet pressing northern region information needs on the user demand side, whether federal or state resource planners, Tribal administrators, or designers of large infrastructure projects. We examine this question through the lens of our three brief case studies.