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Mid-twenty-first century warm season climate change in the Central United States. Part I: regional and global model predictions

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Abstract

A regional climate model (RCM) constrained by future anomalies averaged from atmosphere–ocean general circulation model (AOGCM) simulations is used to generate mid-twenty-first century climate change predictions at 30-km resolution over the central U.S. The predictions are compared with those from 15 AOGCM and 7 RCM dynamic downscaling simulations to identify common climate change signals. There is strong agreement among the multi-model ensemble in predicting wetter conditions in April and May over the northern Great Plains and drier conditions over the southern Great Plains in June through August for the mid-twenty-first century. Projected changes in extreme daily precipitation are statistically significant over only a limited portion of the central U.S. in the RCM constrained with future anomalies. Projected changes in monthly mean 2-m air temperature are generally consistent across the AOGCM ensemble average, North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program RCM ensemble average, and RCM constrained with future anomalies, which produce a maximum increase in August of 2.4–2.9 K over the northern and southern Great Plains and Midwest. Changes in extremes in daily 2-m air temperature from the RCM downscaled with anomalies are statistically significant over nearly the entire Great Plains and Midwest and indicate a positive shift in the warm tail of the daily 2-m temperature distribution that is larger than the positive shift in the cold tail.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by the Department of Energy BER Program, and simulations were run on the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). Output from the IPCC AR4 AOGCM simulations is maintained by the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison. We wish to thank the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) for providing the data used in this paper. NARCCAP is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development (EPA). RClimDex is developed and maintained by Xuebin Zhang and Yang Feng at the Climate Research Division of the Meteorological Service of Canada. We would also like to thank Drs. E. K Vizy, B. Pu, P. Hess, S. Colucci, three anonymous reviewers, and Dr. E. K. Schneider for their helpful comments which have helped improve this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Christina M. Patricola

  2. Jackson School of Geosciences, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station, C1100, Austin, TX, 78712, USA

    Kerry H. Cook

  3. Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University, 3150 TAMU, College Station, TX, 77843-3150, USA

    Christina M. Patricola

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  1. Christina M. Patricola
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Correspondence to Christina M. Patricola.

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Patricola, C.M., Cook, K.H. Mid-twenty-first century warm season climate change in the Central United States. Part I: regional and global model predictions. Clim Dyn 40, 551–568 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1605-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1605-8

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