Skip to main content
Advanced Search

Filters: Tags: Global climate models (X)

10 results (69ms)   

View Results as: JSON ATOM CSV
Monthly temperature and precipitation data from 41 global climate models (GCMs) of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) were compared to observations for the 20th century, with a focus on the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW) and surrounding region. A suite of statistics, or metrics, was calculated, including correlation and variance of mean seasonal spatial patterns, amplitude of seasonal cycle, diurnal temperature range, annual- to decadal-scale variance, long-term persistence, and regional teleconnections to El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Performance, or credibility, was assessed based on the GCMs' abilities to reproduce the observed metrics. GCMs were ranked in their credibility using two...
Climate change is a global problem whose impacts are experienced at the local to regional scale. For this reason, the first step in assessing the impacts of climate change—on a species or an ecosystem, on water resources, or on an aspect of human society such as energy demand or agriculture—is often to develop projections of how temperature, precipitation, and other important aspects of climate might be expected to change in the future at the location of interest. Global climate models produce future climate projections that are usually too coarse to capture the local characteristics that determine climate at any given location: the proximity of that location to a large body of water, for example, which would moderate...