Abstract
Climate influences the ecosystem services we obtain from forest and rangelands. An understanding of how climate may change in the future is needed to consider climate change in resource planning and management. In this chapter, we present the current understanding of the future changes in climate for the Northern Rockies region. Projected climate was derived from climate models in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project version 5 (CMIP5) database, which was used in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. Climate models project that the Earth’s current warming trend will continue throughout the twenty-first century in the Northern Rockies. Compared to observed historical temperature, average warming across the Northern Rockies is projected to be about 2–3 °C by 2050, depending on greenhouse gas emissions. Seasonally, projected winter maximum temperature begins to rise above freezing in the mid-twenty-first century in several parts of the region. Projections for precipitation suggest a slight increase in the future, but precipitation projections, in general, have much higher uncertainty than those for temperature.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (2007). Climate change 2007—The physical science basis. Climate change 2007 working group I contribution to the fourth assessment report of the IPCC. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (2013). Climate change 2013—The physical science basis. Contribution of working group I to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
Joyce, L. A., Talbert, M., Sharp, D., et al. (2017). Historical and projected climate in the Northern Rockies Adaptation Partnership Region. In: J. E. Halofsky, D. L. Peterson, S. K. Dante-Wood, et al. (Eds.), Climate change vulnerability and adaptation in the Northern Rocky Mountains (General Technical Report RMRS-XXX). Fort Collins: U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station.
Littell, J. S., Elsner, M. M., Mauger, G., et al. (2011). Regional climate and hydrologic change in the northern US Rockies and Pacific Northwest: Internally consistent projections of future climate for resource management. Seattle: Climate Impacts Group, University of Washington College of the Environment. http://cses.washington.edu/picea/USFS/pub/Littell_etal_2010. 5 Dec 2016.
Maurer, E. P., Brekke, L., Pruitt, T., & Duffy, P. B. (2007). Fine-resolution climate projections enhance regional climate change impact studies. Eos Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, 88(47), 504–504.
Meehl, G. A., Covey, C., Delworth, T., et al. (2007). The WCRP CMIP3 multimodel data set. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 88(9), 1383–1394.
Nakićenović, N., Davidson, O., Davis, G., et al. (2000). Special report on emissions scenarios: A special report of working group III of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
R Core Team. (2016). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria. Url: https://www.R-project.org/
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. 2012. Future of America’s forests and rangelands: Forest Service 2010 Resources Planning Act Assessment (General Technical Report WO-87). Washington, DC: U.S. Forest Service.
van Vuuren, D. P., Edmonds, J., Kainuma, M., et al. (2011). The representative concentration pathways: An overview. Climatic Change, 109(1-2), 5–31.
Walsh, J., Wuebbles, D., Hayhoe, K., et al. (2014). Our changing climate. In J. M. Melillo, T. C. Richmond, & G. W. Yohe (Eds.), Climate change impacts in the United States: The third National Climate Assessment (pp. 19–67). Washington, DC: U.S. Global Change Research Program.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP , and we thank the climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP the U.S. Department of Energy’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals. Support for this chapter came from the Department of Interior’s North Central and Northwest Climate Science Centers and the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station. We thank Jeff Morisette for his participation in the climate analysis (Joyce et al. 2017). Any use of trade, product, or firm names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Joyce, L.A., Talbert, M., Sharp, D., Stevenson, J. (2018). Historical and Projected Climate in the Northern Rockies Region. In: Halofsky, J., Peterson, D. (eds) Climate Change and Rocky Mountain Ecosystems. Advances in Global Change Research, vol 63. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56928-4_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56928-4_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-56927-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-56928-4
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)