Previous chapters have laid out the process of creating high-resolution climate projections at spatial and time scales appropriate for assessing the impacts of climate change at the local to regional scale, and described available assessments, global climate model archives, and both RCM- and ESDM-based high-resolution projections. This chapter builds on this information to discuss the process by which high-resolution climate projections can be selected, applied, and interpreted to quantify future impacts for a given location, system, or assessment.

What lies in the future of regional downscaling, and how will future developments advance the information available for impacts and policymaking analyses? Models and methods are constantly under development; what might users expect to become available over the next decades as computing resources reach and extend beyond exascale (over 100 times faster than the current fastest computers), and global climate model resolutions reach regional scales? What uncertainties will remain to be resolved, even with these advances? By its nature, much of this discussion is somewhat philosophical and this chapter does not include real-world case studies. Instead, it highlights specific ways assessments may be affected by future advances and discusses key areas of future development.