fine-scale strongprocessesstrong regulate the response of extreme events.pdfVIP

Fine-scale processes regulate the response of extreme events to global climate change † ‡ ‡ Noah S. Diffenbaugh* , Jeremy S. Pal , Robert J. Trapp*, and Filippo Giorgi *Purdue Climate Change Research Center and Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Purdue University, 550 Stadium Mall Drive, West Lafayette, IN 47907-5201; and ‡Earth Systems Physics Group, Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, 34014 Trieste, Italy Edited by Stephen H. Schneider, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, and approved September 11, 2005 (received for review July 17, 2005) We find that extreme temperature and precipitation events are Although anthropogenic enhancement of the global greenhouse likely to respond substantially to anthropogenically enhanced effect is likely to alter the large-scale environment in which extreme greenhouse forcing and that fine-scale climate system modifiers events occur (20), it is not currently clear in what ways fine-scale are likely to play a critical role in the net response. At present, such feedbacks, such as through soil moisture and snow albedo, will events impact a wide variety of natural and human systems, and modulate the regional and local responses to those large-scale future changes in their frequency andor magnitude could have changes. Therefore, to capture these fine-scale processes, we have dramatic ecological, economic, and sociological consequences. Our used a regional climate model (RCM) to simulate the climate of the results indicate that fine-scale snow albedo effects influence the contiguous United States at very fine horizontal resolution. To the response of both hot and cold events and that peak increases in best of our knowled