Spatial climate analogs in climate change research, impact assessment, and decision-making

Abstract Climate adaptation requires actionable scientific information about potential climate impacts. Spatial climate analogs answer the question, ‘where does the future climate of a focal location occur today?’ Analogs provide a means to develop measures of climate change exposure and can be applied to project climate change impacts. Although analogs are the basis for empirical models, recent applications of analogs have been structured as spatial models, which can contribute distinct information compared to more commonly used nonspatial approaches. Analogs may improve our ability to communicate climate change impacts for science and nonscience audiences. We review approaches for identifying analogs, summarize their applications, highlight understudied features, and examine evidence of their utility for science communication. We conclude by identifying research needs: the establishment of best practices for analog identification, the adoption of validation methods for analog impact models, and the evaluation of the utility of analogs for communication.