Toward co-designed Earth System Models: Reflecting end-user priorities in local applications from a modeler's perspective
Earth System Models (ESM) are crucial for quantifying climate impacts across Earth's interconnected systems and supporting science-based adaptation and mitigation. However, not including end-users, especially decision-makers representing communities vulnerable to climate change, can limit model utility, increase epistemic risks, and lead to information misuse in decision-making. While the ESM community increasingly values broad community engagement, end-users may not initially perceive models as useful for local planning. Co-designing models with end-users fosters two-way learning: users better understand models and their outputs, while modelers gain insights into fine-scale local processes like monitoring practices and management priorities. Higher-level co-design can lead to more customized, priority-driven, and useful modeling products. Despite these benefits, modelers often struggle to initiate meaningful partnerships with local communities. Therefore, this paper explores model co-design from the perspective of modelers. This study presents two case studies where modelers and social scientists collaborated with Indigenous communities' decision-makers to reflect their priorities in model design and application. In the Arctic Rivers Project, high-resolution climate and hydrology data sets for Alaska were developed with guidance from an Indigenous Advisory Council, using optimized, coupled land-atmosphere models. In the Mid-Klamath Project, we partnered with the Karuk Tribe's Department of Natural Resources to assess climate change and prescribed burning impacts on terrestrial hydrology in the Klamath River Basin. Drawing from these studies, we introduce a four-level framework: (a) Co-design Configuration; (b) Model Tuning; (c) Incorporate Contextual Knowledge; (d) Co-develop New Model Functions. We aim to help researchers consider and compare co-design across diverse modeling projects systematically and coherently.