From the UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN and the “worse than we thought” department, comes this claim that the “business as usual” scenario will make for intolerable summers. They claim a “big improvement” in modeling, but like all other climate models, they have no way of testing the veracity of their forecast output against the reality in the future.
High-resolution climate models present alarming new projections for US
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Approaching the second half of the century, the United States is likely to experience increases in the number of days with extreme heat, the frequency and duration of heat waves, and the length of the growing season. In response, it is anticipated that societal, agricultural and ecological needs will increase the demand on already-strained natural resources like water and energy. University of Illinois researchers have developed new, high-resolution climate models that may help policymakers mitigate these effects at a local level.
In a paper published in the journal Earth’s Future, atmospheric sciences professor Donald Wuebbles, graduate student Zach Zobel and Argonne National Laboratory scientists Jiali Wang and Rao Kotamarthi demonstrate how increased-resolution modeling can improve future climate projections.
Many climate models use a spatial resolution of hundreds of kilometers. This approach is suitable for global-scale models that run for centuries into the future, but they fail to capture small-scale land and weather features that influence local atmospheric events, the researchers said.
“Our new models work at a spatial resolution of 12 km, allowing us to examine localized changes in the climate system across the continental U.S.,” Wuebbles said. “It is the difference between being able to resolve something as small as Champaign County versus the entire state of Illinois – it’s a big improvement.”
The study looked at two different future greenhouse gas output projections – one “business as usual” scenario where fossil fuel consumption remains on its current trajectory and one that implies a significant reduction in consumption by the end of the century. The group generated data for two decade-long projections (2045-54 and 2085-94) and compared them with historical data (1995-2004) for context.
“One of the most alarming findings in our business-as-usual projection shows that by late-century the southeastern U.S. will experience maximum summer temperatures every other day that used to occur only once every 20 days,” Zobel said.
Although not as severe, other regions of the country are also expected to experience significant changes in temperature.
“The Midwest could see large unusual heat events, like the 1995 Chicago heat wave, which killed more than 800 people, become more common and perhaps even occur as many as five times per year by the end of the century,” Wuebbles said. “Heat waves increase the mortality rate within the Midwest and the Northeast because people in these densely populated regions are not accustomed to coping with that kind of heat that frequently.”
The extreme temperatures and extended duration of the warmer season will likely take a significant toll on crops and the ecosystem, the researchers said. Areas like the American West, which is already grappling for limited water resources, could witness much shorter frost seasons at high elevations, leading to a smaller surge in spring meltwater than what is needed for the early growing season.
“The high resolution of our models can capture regional climate variables caused by local landforms like mountains, valleys and bodies of water,” Zobel said. “That will allow policymakers to tailor response actions in a very localized way.”
The new models concentrate on temperature and do not factor in the effect that regional precipitation patterns will have on the impact of the anticipated climate changes. The researchers plan to extend their study to account for these additional variables.
“The concept of global climate change can be somewhat abstract, and people want to know how these projected changes are going to affect them, in their community,” Wuebbles said. “Our models are helping answer those questions, and that is what separates our work from the larger, global-scale studies.”
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The paper:
“High resolution dynamical downscaling ensemble projections of future extreme temperature distributions for the United States” is available online (open access): http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2017EF000642
Abstract
The aim of this study is to examine projections of extreme temperatures over the continental United States (CONUS) for the 21st century using an ensemble of high spatial resolution dynamically downscaled model simulations with different boundary conditions. The downscaling uses the Weather Research and Forecast model at a spatial resolution of 12 km along with outputs from three different Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 global climate models that provide boundary conditions under two different future greenhouse gas (GHG) concentration trajectories. The results from two decadal-length time slices (2045-2054 and 2085-2094) are compared with a historical decade (1995-2004). Probability density functions of daily maximum/minimum temperatures are analyzed over seven climatologically cohesive regions of the CONUS. The impacts of different boundary conditions as well as future GHG concentrations on extreme events such as heat waves and days with temperature higher than 95°F are also investigated. The results show that the intensity of extreme warm temperature in future summer is significantly increased, while the frequency of extreme cold temperature in future winter decreases. The distribution of summer daily maximum temperature experiences a significant warm-side shift and increased variability, while the distribution of winter daily minimum temperature is projected to have a less significant warm-side shift with decreased variability. Using “business-as-usual” scenario, 5-day heat waves are projected to occur at least 5-10 times per year in most CONUS and ≥95°F days will increase by 1-2 months by the end of the century.
Some of the output from the model:
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Let me know when they start doing grids of 1 meter or smaller.
Then I’ll pay attention.
G I G O
YOU ARE THERE!
Seems the Alarmists are following the script of “Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea [The Global Warming Edition] Movie
Ha ha
I love Barbara Eden’s dancing to the Frogmen music. I would love to “dance’ with Miss Eden.
I Dream of Genie!
Models – GIGO. Enough said.
Improving the resolution is not the problem. Weather simulations that are even higher resolution are only good for about 10 days at best. The real problem with the models is that they have hard coded in that more CO2 causes warming yet there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is zero. The the digital simulation of climate change is really just a sophisticated form of make believe.
Weubbles and his fellow morons have to tune-in model convection parameters to get these results. They have no idea if they are correct, yet they present them as data. They have zero idea if longer growing seasons allows for more grain production. They have no idea if lower min temps means less heating for homes and business. They have no idea if anything they write will be true. Future junk predictions.
Dr. Weubbles is Junk science in action. (He must’ve got the Ab’ie Normal brain)
Dr Weubbles, you are a pseudo-scientist. You are free to wallow in the junkscience you create.
Junk in, Junk out. (JIJO)
Someone needs to create a new computer game based on creating different climates. For the CAGW gang the most popular would involve making very hot and extreme ones while the Good Green forces battle the forces of fossil fueled capitalism to Save the Planet and survive and all that. The programming used to create this ‘scientific projection’ could be the basis of that, though even some mom’s basement software developers could likely do much better.
Would be ideal for the game to also be able to create new ice age climates for the world to battle but that could lead to incorrect thinking so would have to be banned.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, we know that heat waves in the US were much, much worse in the past.
And this does not only apply to the 1930s, as the 1920s and 50s were also notable for heta waves
If they’re going to compare to “historical data” from 1995-2004, it might be interesting to run their downscaled model against historical runs from those same models covering 1995-2004, and see how closely that resembled reality. Or better yet, perform the same exercise for the 30s so they can tell if their approach is capable of reproducing an actual historical event of elevated heat waves.
Amazing what money is being spent on. I design and troubleshoot air quality control equipment for coal fired power plants. Yes, your read correctly, I am guilty of helping that dirty industry continue to operate pumping tons of the dreaded CO2 into the atmosphere. I lay awake at night wondering what kind of person that I am. :). Not. I have helped remove tons among tons of real pollutants from the emissions of coal fired power plants. We have even overachieved in some areas and are putting the transformed pollutant back into the environment.
We utilize several very complex models that were designed by PhD types to generate all kinds of results for installation of the air quality control equipment. Equipment sizing, capital costs, operating costs, equipment effectiveness, economic impacts, etc. I was using and evaluating the model as a working engineer, as opposed to a PhD, several years ago. I came across a number input that I did not understand. There were no units and it seemed random. After much digging I found out it was called a calibration variable. You used that variable to calibrate the model when it varied from what was actually found in the field. That was years ago. If that model was to be re-used today no one would even know about that variable and produce data and information like it was totally valid.
I wonder how many of those climate models have variables similar to that described above and most likely most have multiple variables like that that will never be found. What could go wrong?
Anyone who continues reading after this start:
“High resolution dynamical downscaling ensemble projections of future … ”
Has far more tolerance of fake science bull-shirt than me!
I especially liked this part… “Heat waves increase the mortality rate within the Midwest and the Northeast because people in these densely populated regions are not accustomed to coping with that kind of heat that frequently.”
Their example disproves their claim. The southerners somehow don’t have higher mortality during heatwaves. I know a few northerners, and I am confident that if heat waves become more frequent in the north, the locals will quickly adapt!
I don’t think those researchers get out of that ivory tower often enough.
Well, I imagine the sale of window ac units would go up. And maybe new houses would be built with central ac. Seriously, this is not complicated.
No more skiing in Illinois ! What a pity.