Global and Regional Climate Response to Elevated Greenhouse Gases

Intercomparison of Regional Biases and CO₂ Sensitivity of AOGCMs
Other Related Research

Global and Regional Climate Sensitivity to Land Cover Change

Global Climate Sensitivity to Historical Land Cover Change
Regional Climate Effects of Historical Land Cover Change

Joint Regional Climate-Hydrology-Ecosystem Response to Altered Forcing

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Intercomparison of Regional Biases and CO₂ Sensitivity of AOGCMs

We compared the regional biases and transient doubled-CO2 sensitivities of nine coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs). The models generally had greater agreement in their sensitivities than their controls did with observations.

Kittel, T.G.F., F. Giorgi, and G.A. Meehl. 1998. Intercomparison of regional biases and doubled CO2-sensitivity of coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model experiments. Climate Dynamics 14:1-15. ABSTRACT

Other Related Research

Kattenberg, A., F. Giorgi, H. Grassl, G.A. Meehl, J.F. B. Mitchell, R. Stouffer, T. Tokioka, A. Weaver, and T.M.L. Wigley (Lead Authors) and others.  1996.  Climate models - Projection of future climate. Pp. 285-357 (Chapter 6), in: Climate Change 1995. The Science of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group I to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. J.T. Houghton, L.G. Meiro Filho, B.A. Callander, N. Harris, A. Kattenberg, and K. Maskell (eds.). Cambridge University Press, New York.

Campbell, G.G., T.G.F. Kittel, G.A. Meehl, and W.M. Washington. 1995. Low-frequency variability and CO2 transient climate change. Part 2: EOF analysis of CO2 and model-configuration sensitivity. Global and Planetary Change 10:201-216.

Global Climate Sensitivity to Historical Land Cover Change

Simulations with NCAR's global climate models CCM2 and CCM3 indicated that climate sensitivity to land surface biophysical changes associated with historical land cover change is of the same order of magnitude as that suggested for elevated greenhouse gases (Chase et al. 1996, 2000, 2001). The spatial pattern of responses show high climate sensitivity even in regions removed from where the largest land cover changes occurred.

Chase, T.N., R.A. Pielke, T.G.F. Kittel, R. Nemani, and S.W. Running. 1996. Sensitivity of a general circulation model to global changes in leaf area index. Journal of Geophysical Research 101:7393-7408.

Chase, T.N., R.A. Pielke, Sr., T.G.F. Kittel, R.R. Nemani, S.W. Running. 2000.  Simulated impacts of historical land cover changes on global climate in northern winter. Climate Dynamics 16:93-105. ABSTRACT

Chase, T.N., R.A. Pielke Sr., T.G.F. Kittel, M. Zhao, A.J. Pitman, S.W. Running , R.R. Nemani.  2001.  The relative climatic effects of landcover change and elevated carbon dioxide combined with aerosols: A comparison of model results and observations. Journal of Geophysical Research, accepted.

Regional Climate Model Experiments Evaluating Effects of Historical Land Cover Change.

A climate version of the Colorado State University's Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (CLIMRAMS) was developed by Liston and Pielke (in press; see also Copeland et al. 1996, Chase et al. 1999) to evaluate the sensitivity of regional climate to altered local, regional, and global forcing.

Climate experiments with CLIMRAMS include United States, U.S. Great Plains, and Rocky Mountain regional responses to altered regional land use patterns, with a focus on the response of Colorado Front Range montane and alpine climates to historical land use changes in the adjacent Great Plains.

These experiments suggest that historical land cover changes has altered the climate of the conterminous United States (Copeland et al. 1996) and, in higher resolution simulations, that of the Central Grasslands and Colorado Front Range (Copeland et al. 1996, Chase et al. 1999).  Results for the Front Range are supported by ecological and hydrological trends (Stohlgren et al. 1998).

Funding is from USGS Biological Resources Division (formally National Biological Service) Global Change Research Program projects for the Colorado Rockies and U.S. Central Grasslands, with additional support from UCAR's Climate System Modeling Program (CSMP) and NSF's Niwot Ridge/Green Lakes LTER Program.

Chase, T.N., R. Pielke, Sr., T.G.F. Kittel, J.S. Baron, and T.J. Stohlgren. 1999.  Impacts on Colorado Rocky Mountain weather due to land use changes on the adjacent Great Plains. Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, 104:16673-16690.

Copeland, J.H., R.A. Pielke, and T.G.F. Kittel. 1996. Potential climatic impacts of vegetation change: A regional modeling study. Journal of Geophysical Research 101:7409-7418.

Stohlgren, T.J., T.N. Chase, R.A. Pielke, Sr., T.G.F. Kittel, and J. Baron. 1998.  Evidence that local land use practices influence regional climate, vegetation, and stream flow patterns in adjacent natural areas. Global Change Biology 4:495-504.

The above USGS-funded regional climate modeling projects are closely linked with USGS projects on hydrological and ecological responses to climate change for the Rockies and Central Grasslands. The key cross-project objective is to use coupled climate-surface hydrology/ecosystem models to determine the joint regional climatic, hydrological, and ecological response to altered forcing.  This task builds on RAMS-LEAF (Walko et al. 2000), TOPMODEL-RHESSys (Baron et al. 1997) and RAMS-CENTURY coupling work accomplished by this and related projects.

Additional work evaluated CLIMRAMS simulations of local landuse effects on the climate of adjacent regions (discussed in the previous section) in conjunction with climatic, ecological, and hydrological observations (Stohlgren et al. 1998).

Baron, J.S., M.D. Hartman, T.G.F. Kittel, L.E. Band, D.S. Ojima, and R.B. Lammers. 1998. Effects of land cover, water redistribution, and temperature on ecosystem processes in the South Platte Basin. Ecological Applications 8:1037-1051.

Stohlgren, T.J., T.N. Chase, R.A. Pielke, Sr., T.G.F. Kittel, and J. Baron. 1998. Evidence that local land use practices influence regional climate, vegetation, and stream flow patterns in adjacent natural areas. Global Change Biology 4:495-504.

Walko, R.L., L.E. Band, J. Baron, T.G.F. Kittel, R. Lammers, T.J. Lee, R.A. Pielke, Sr., C. Taylor, C. Tague, C.J. Tremback, and P.L. Vidale. 2000. Coupled atmosphere-biophysics-hydrology models for environmental modeling. Journal of Applied Meteorology 39:931-944.

See also: Coupled Ecosystem-Hydrologic Responses to Altered Climate and Other Forcing