---
title: "Glossary of Terms"
slug: "glossary-of-terms"
description: "Explore climate risk analytics, downscaling techniques, and key climate models like AAL, CMIP6, and RCPs to understand future climate impacts."
tags: ["Climate Risk", "Araya"]
updated: 2026-06-26T21:22:07Z
published: 2026-06-26T21:22:07Z
canonical: "docs.cotality.com/glossary-of-terms"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.cotality.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Glossary of Terms

- **AAL** – Average Annual Loss: the expected loss per year, averaged over many years. Used for estimating financial

property risk due to climate perils.
- **AR5** – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report.
- **AR6** – The most current report from the IPCC. The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report.
- **CMIP5** – Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5: CMIP creates standards and sets experimental protocols

for climate models.
- **CMIP6** –The most current models from the CMIP. Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6.
- **CONUS** – Continental United States
- **Downscaling** – The process of using large-scale climate models to make climate predictions at a more granular level.

“Downscaling techniques can be divided into two broad categories: dynamical and statistical. Dynamical downscaling

refers to the use of high-resolution regional simulations to dynamically extrapolate the effects of large-scale climate

processes to regional or local scales of interest. Statistical downscaling encompasses the use of various statistics-

based techniques to determine relationships between large-scale climate patterns resolved by global climate models

and observed local climate responses.” (from NOAA) Cotality uses both dynamical and statistical downscaling,

depending on the model.
- **CRA** – Climate Risk Analytics by Cotality; a climate model of the future at an unprecedented level of detail. Combines

industry-leading property data with replacement costs, valuation elements, and natural hazard information to build a

comprehensive account of physical risk.
- **GCM** – General Circulation Model; a numerical model used to assess the physical processes in the atmosphere,

oceans, biosphere etc., simulating the response of the global climate system to changes in greenhouse gas

emissions.
- **GHG** – Greenhouse gas.
- **IED** – The Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) is the main EU instrument regulating pollutant emissions from industrial

installations.
- **ISIMIP** – The Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project. ISIMIP offers a framework for consistently projecting

the impacts of climate change across affected sectors and spatial scales. An international network of climate-impact

modelers contributes to a comprehensive and consistent picture of the world under different climate-change scenarios.
- **NAH** – North Atlantic Hurricane Model.
- **RCPs** – Representative Concentration Pathways: Defined scenarios that make predictions of how concentrations of

greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will change in future as a result of human activities. The four RCPs range from very

high (RCP8.5) through to very low (RCP2.6) future concentrations. The numerical values of the RCPs (2.6, 4.5, 6.0 and

8.5) refer to the concentrations of greenhouse gases in 2100. RCPs tell where we could end up without helping us

understand the path we took to get there.
- **SCS** – Severe Convective Storm; includes tornados, hailstorms and straight-line winds.
- **SSPs** – Shared Socio-economic Pathways: climate change scenarios of projected socioeconomic global changes up to

2100 as defined in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report on climate change in 2021. In CMIP6, scenarios are referred to

as shared socioeconomic pathways, or SSPs. SSPs represent changes in population, economic growth, education,

urbanization, and the rate of technological development that would affect future greenhouse gas emissions, providing a

storyline of how we could reach certain levels of warming. SSPs are closely tied to the representative concentration

pathways, or RCPs, the scenarios used in CMIP5, which are based entirely on greenhouse gas concentrations in the

atmosphere. In AR6, there are added pathways presenting more possible future horizons.
- **SLR** – Sea Level Rise
- **SST** – Sea surface temperature
- **TC** – Tropical Cyclone
- **USGS** – United States Geological Survey