This article provides an epistemological assessment of climate analogue methods, with specific reference to the use of spatial analogues in the study of the future climate of target locations. Our contention is that, due to formal and conceptual inadequacies of geometrical dissimilarity metrics and the loss of relevant information, especially when reasoning from the physical to the socio-economical level, purported inferences from climate analogues of the spatial kind we consider here prove limited in a number of ways. Indeed, we formulate five outstanding problems concerning the search for best analogues, which we call the problem of non-uniqueness of the source, problem of non-uniqueness of the target, problem of average, problem of non-causal correlations and problem of inferred properties, respectively. In the face of such problems, we then offer two positive recommendations for a fruitful application of this methodology to the assessment of impact, adaptation and vulnerability studies of climate change, especially in the context of what we may prosaically dub “twin cities”. Arguably, such recommendations help decision-makers constrain the set of plausible climate analogues by integrating local knowledge relevant to the locations of interest.

本文提供了气候类比方法的认识论评估，具体参考了空间类比在目标地点未来气候研究中的使用。我们的观点是，由于几何差异度量在形式和概念上的不足以及相关信息的丢失，特别是在从物理到社会经济层面进行推理时，我们在这里考虑的空间类气候类似物的所谓推论被证明是有限的。有多种方式。事实上，我们提出了关于寻找最佳类似物的五个突出问题，我们称之为源非唯一性问题、目标非唯一性问题、平均值问题、非因果相关性问题和推断问题属性，分别。面对这些问题，我们提出了两条积极的建议，以便将该方法有效地应用于评估气候变化的影响、适应和脆弱性研究，特别是在我们可以平淡地称为“双城”的背景下。可以说，此类建议可以帮助决策者通过整合与感兴趣地​​点相关的当地知识来限制一系列看似合理的气候类似物。