Regional High Resolution Prediction - UW Atmospheric Sciences区域高分辨率预测-威斯康星大学大气科学.pptVIP

Determining the Local Implications of Global Warming Project Support King County Seattle City Light EPA STAR Program Climate Impacts Group Questions What are the implications of global warming for the Northwest? How will our mountains and land-water contrasts alter the story? Do global models tell us the full story? Regional Climate Prediction To understand the impact of global warming, one starts with general circulation models (GCMs) that provide a view of the global evolution of the atmosphere. GCMs are essentially the same as global weather prediction models but are run with much coarser resolution and allow the composition of the atmosphere to vary in time (e.g., more CO2) Even leading GCMs only describe features of roughly 500 km or larger in scale. Model Topography and Resolution Downscaling Downscaling The traditional approach to use GCM output is through statistical downscaling, which finds the statistical relationship between large-scale atmospheric structures and local weather. Statistical downscaling either assumes current relationships will hold or makes simplifying assumptions on how local weather works. Downscaling Such statistical approaches may be a reasonable start, but may give deceptive or wrong answers… since the relationships between the large scale atmospheric flow and local weather might change in the future. Downscaling There is only one way to do this right… running full weather forecasting models at high resolution over extended periods, with the large scale conditions being provided by the GCMs….this is called dynamical downscaling. Such weather prediction models have very complete physics and high resolution, so they are capable of handling any “surprises” Example of Potential Surprises Might western Washington be colder during the summer under global warming? Reason: interior heats up, pressure falls, marine air pushes in from the ocean Might the summers be wetter? Why? More thunderstorms due to greater surface heating. Downsca