Regional Climate Trends and Scenarios for the United States: Input to the National Climate Assessment
Abstract
A set of nine climate documents has been prepared as a resource to authors of the 2013 National Climate Assessment (NCA) report; one for each of the eight NCA-defined regions, as well as the contiguous U.S. These were produced in collaboration with numerous regional experts, most of whom are document coauthors. The documents have been prepared in accordance to specifications developed by the NCA Development Advisory Committee (NCADAC) Scenarios Working Group (SWG), due to the anticipated need for historical information and future climate scenarios. The processes and key findings will be presented, including historical conditions and trends pertinent to each region, as well as future conditions as simulated by climate models. The historical information concentrates on temperature and precipitation, primarily based on analyses of data from the National Weather Service's (NWS) Cooperative Observer Network. Key characteristics of the U.S. historical climate include areas of statistically significant overall temperature and precipitation trends (including identification of the "warming hole"), as well as trends in the number of extreme events. Additional climate features are discussed based on the availability of information. The future simulations incorporate analyses from multiple sources, including data from the Climate Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 (CMIP3) archive and dynamically-downscaled simulations from the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP). Characteristics of the future climate simulated by these models for the IPCC SRES high (A2) and low (B1) emissions scenarios will be presented, focusing primarily on temperature and precipitation. This includes maps of both CMIP3 and NARCCAP simulations indicating where models are in agreement regarding statistically significant changes in temperature and precipitation. A comparison between annual and seasonal 20th century CMIP3 model simulations and observations will also be presented, along with 21st century time series, which indicate that future warming is much larger than that for the 20th century. The range of model-simulated precipitation changes is large, thus, there is great uncertainty associated with precipitation changes in these future climate scenarios.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFMGC13E..04S
- Keywords:
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- 3305 ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES / Climate change and variability;
- 3309 ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES / Climatology;
- 3355 ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES / Regional modeling