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Abstract (from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10113-014-0585-0): Drought is a part of the normal climate variability and the life and livelihoods of the Western United States. However, drought can also be a high impact or extreme event in some cases, such as the exceptional 2002 drought that had deleterious impacts across the Western United States. Studies of long-term climate variability along with climate change projections indicate that the Western United States should expect much more severe and extended drought episodes than experienced over the last century when most modern water law and policies were developed, such as the 1922 Colorado River Compact. This paper will discuss research examining...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: Drought, North Central CASC
Abstract (from http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpls.2014.00785/abstract): Fire is a key ecological process affecting vegetation dynamics and land cover. The characteristic frequency, size, and intensity of fire are driven by interactions between top-down climate-driven and bottom-up fuel-related processes. Disentangling climatic from non-climatic drivers of past fire regimes is a grand challenge in Earth systems science, and a topic where both paleoecology and ecological modeling have made substantial contributions. In this manuscript, we (1) review the use of sedimentary charcoal as a fire proxy and the methods used in charcoal-based fire history reconstructions; (2) identify existing techniques...
This research element supports vulnerability assessment for climate adaptation (Glick et al. 2011) by focusing on the provision of best available climate information for the region in order to inform analysis of ecosystem exposure to change. Climate in the North Central United States (NCUS) is driven by a combination that includes large-scale patterns in atmospheric circulation, the region’s complex topography extending from the High Rockies to the Great Plains, and geographic variations in water and surface-energy balance. Hydroclimatic variability within the NCUS determines the sustainability of ecosystems in the region as well as the ecosystem goods and services they provide. We propose, therefore, to use...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.4127/abstract): Gridded topoclimatic datasets are increasingly used to drive many ecological and hydrological models and assess climate change impacts. The use of such datasets is ubiquitous, but their inherent limitations are largely unknown or overlooked particularly in regard to spatial uncertainty and climate trends. To address these limitations, we present a statistical framework for producing a 30-arcsec (∼800-m) resolution gridded dataset of daily minimum and maximum temperature and related uncertainty from 1948 to 2012 for the conterminous United States. Like other datasets, we use weather station data and elevation-based predictors of temperature,...
The North Central Climate Science Center (NC CSC) funded research activities in order to provide pertinent climate information to natural resource managers in our region to evaluate impacts of climatic changes and to develop strategies to respond to changes affecting their natural and cultural resources. These funded activities provided improved climate data sets, such as the high resolution temperature dataset, derived data from the latest international climate projections. The NC CSC used this information and additional climate information to evaluate and assess impacts on ecosystem and natural resources. This information was generated in partnership with National Park Service managers, Native American leaders,...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL062803/abstract): Observations from the main mountain climate station network in the western United States (U.S.) suggest that higher elevations are warming faster than lower elevations. This has led to the assumption that elevation-dependent warming is prevalent throughout the region with impacts to water resources and ecosystem services. Here we critically evaluate this network's temperature observations and show that extreme warming observed at higher elevations is the result of systematic artifacts and not climatic conditions. With artifacts removed, the network's 1991–2012 minimum temperature trend decreases from +1.16°C decade−1 to +0.106°C decade−1...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/15-1061/abstract): Weather and climate affect many ecological processes, making spatially continuous yet fine-resolution weather data desirable for ecological research and predictions. Numerous downscaled weather data sets exist, but little attempt has been made to evaluate them systematically. Here we address this shortcoming by focusing on four major questions: (1) How accurate are downscaled, gridded climate data sets in terms of temperature and precipitation estimates? (2) Are there significant regional differences in accuracy among data sets? (3) How accurate are their mean values compared with extremes? (4) Does their accuracy depend on spatial resolution?...