John Abatzoglou

email: john.abatzoglou@dri.edu

Research

Fuel treatments for the next 20-50 years need to be planned with respect to future climate projections. Our project is to utilize and refine high-res daily weather and climate information to assess whether current fuel treatments will be able to withstand future changes in the timing and magnitude of extreme fire weather conditions.

Current work includes downscaling daily temp, rh, winds, precip to 8km resolution and to that of stations frequently utilized. We are developing a probabilistic model to assess future changes across multiple models.

We would be interested in comparing our statistical downscaled results to those of the dynamically downscaled models.

Significant findings thus far include large increases in the frequency and window length for extreme fire danger, particularly across the desert SW.

Randall Alliss

email: randall.alliss@ngc.com

Dr. Randall J. Alliss
Manager, Atmospheric Effects
Northrop Grumman - TASC
4801 Stonecroft Blvd
Chantilly, VA 20151
703-633-8300x4002
703-449-3400 fax

We are generally interested in regional climate modeling and dynamical downscaling to study future climate impacts.

Research

Our research goals at the highest level include quantifying the impacts of future climate change on life and economy in the Mid-Atlantic States. We plan to use the NARCCAP data to investigate climate impacts over the Mid-Atlantic and Chesapeake Bay regions. We are specifically interested in understanding the impacts on agriculture and marine commerce. We will analyze the NARCCAP simulations of extreme heat, cold, and precipitation events for both the present climate and projected future climates. We will also investigate the impacts of sea-level rise on marine commerce in the Chesapeake Bay. We would like to also use the NARCCAP data to initialize high resolution runs using the WRF model in order to study local impacts. Our research should help to address these questions and to provide estimates of how future weather extremes will affect the economies of the Mid-Atlantic States.

We plan to utilize data from both the GFDL time-slice experiments as well as the NCEP driven runs.

Noel Aloysius

email: noel.aloysius@yale.edu

Noel Aloysius is a second year doctoral student at Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He has a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Peradeniya and a MS in Earth System Science and Policy from the University of North Dakota.

Prior to joining FES he held positions as an Instructor in Civil Engineering at University of Peradeniya, Design Engineer and Project Manager at an engineering consulting company in Sri Lanka, Water Resources Engineer at the International Water Management Institute, a not-for-profit international research organization headquartered in Sri Lanka, and Drought Assessment Project Manager at the Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium in Grand Forks, North Dakota. His advisor is Professor James Saiers.

At FES his research focuses on the role of climate and land use change in the vulnerability and resilience of water resources in semi-arid and tropical river basins.

Research

The goal of my research is to examine the role of climate change and variability (CCV) and land use and land cover change (LULC)on the vulnerability and resilience of water resources in river basins with complex water infrastructure (e.g. dams) and ecosystem services (e.g. water for food and nature). The research will quantify the spatiotemporal variation of surface and groundwater resources and investigate the ecosystem services that are affected by water availability within the river basin. I will examine these issues by developing hydrological models for river basins which include the Lower Rio Grande in the United States and Mexico and the Congo in Africa. Specifically, the proposed research will seek to answer the following research questions:

1. What are the historical changes and variability in climate (temperature and precipitation) and the changes in land use and land cover and how these changes affected the basin water resources?
2. How much water is diverted to ecosystem services such as production of food and water supply for people?
3. How will basin hydrology change due to deforestation, logging concessions, agriculture expansion, and urban land use expansion?
4. What are the projected changes and variability in climate (precipitation and temperature) and how will this change the basin hydrology when combined with the changes in question 3? I will, specifically, address how the projected increase in the frequency of extreme events such as droughts will change the basin water availability in space and time.
5. How will the basin hydrology change with the inclusion of water infrastructure such as dams combined with changes in question 3 and 4?
6. What are the strategies required to improve the human welfare and ecosystem functioning while preserving the resilience of the system?

Answering these research questions require the use of hydrological models that define and simulate the required processes. These models have to be calibrated and validated before using them for inference. When a calibrated model is used to project future changes for a new set of land use and climate scenario, the projected changes inherit an increased uncertainty, because with the new scenario the boundary conditions (e.g. land use) have changed and so does the parameters associated with them. In order to fully understand the changes in the parameters, the model has to be validated with a new set of observed data resulted from the new boundary conditions. This is not plausible, especially for climate change impact studies. The following research question will help to address this issue,

• How will the model parameters (associated with the boundary conditions such as land use and climate) change for a set of different boundary conditions and their respective observed outcome? How can this information be used to address the uncertainties in future projections?

Valentine Anantharaj

email: vga1@msstate.edu
website: http://www.gri.msstate.edu

For a profile please see:
http://www.gri.msstate.edu/about/dir_info.php?d=1597

Research

Project Title: Sustainable Management of Coastal Forest Ecosystems under a Changing Climate in the Northern Gulf of Mexico

The forest and wetlands ecosystems along the coasts of the Northern Gulf of Mexico, trying to recover from the devastations of hurricane Katrina, are faced with increased stress from the changing climate. In order to develop appropriate adaptation strategies, the forest management specialists are in need of relevant regional future climate projects at spatial scales that are meaningful. Climate models and global reanalysis datasets have provided long term climate simulations and reanalysis of past, present, and future climate change. The available IPCC AR4 climate assessments are at spatial scales that are too coarse for the decision making needs of the Gulf Coast. Hence, we propose to dynamically downscale selected simulations for regional climate projections. We will incorporate the downscaled scenarios into LANDIS, a Decision Support Tool (DST) for forest ecosystems management.

Our approach involves: (a) assessment of the continental scale simulations from the NARCCAP for use with LANDIS; (b) downscaling of a set of NARCCAP to 10x10 km2 resolutions; (c) simulating forests ecosystem changes under the projected regional climate using LANDIS; (d) generating and evaluating a suite of hypothetical forest management decisions for one IPCC emission scenarios; and (e) incorporate our results and products into the NOAA Ecosystems Data Assembly Center (EDAC) in order to make them available to a broader community stakeholders in the Gulf of Mexico Alliance (GOMA).

The focus of this study addresses the restoration and conservation of coastal wetlands and estuarine ecosystems priority issues.

Theresa Andersen

email: tkande@iastate.edu

Iowa State University

Research

Main research goals

• determine if climate models indicate any seasonal, diurnal, and multi-year trends in wind speeds
• determine if the model wind speed trends are similar to the observed
• motivated by research done by Pryor et al. where observed trends show wind speeds are generally decreasing across the US

Research methods

• ncdump data from netcdf files
• write fortran programs to extract data (particular hours and/or gridpoints)
• use ferret to plot data and analyze trends

Research plan
Currently analyzing MM5 wind speed data. Would like to expand the study to include the other NARCCAP models wind speed output

What data are needed
Surface wind speed data from RSM, and other levels and/or models if time permits.

Anticipated findings or significance of work
The models pick up the significant time history trends and seasonal trends; the models do not represent the diurnal trends well

Bruce T. Anderson

email: brucea@bu.edu

Bruce T. Anderson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at Boston University. He serves as a Research Consultant for the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment (NECIA) project and heads the Experimental Center for Remote Observations of Production (ECROP). He has also served as the Associate Chair for the Department. He has been a Royal Society Visiting Fellow, a National Research Council Fellow and a NOAA Visiting Scientist Fellow. His research interests include: Regional impacts of climate variability; Large-scale and regional atmospheric dynamics and hydrology; Coupled ocean-atmosphere modes of variability; and Historic and future climate trends within observations and climate-simulation models. He received his Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1998 and graduated with a B.S. in Physics from University of California, Santa Barbara in 1994.

Research

We plan on using the NARCCAP data to help identify and analyze non-linear behavior in the time evolution of climate parameters derived from global and regional climate change predictions. While many climate parameters — such as global and regional temperatures- show a quasi-linear response to changes in radiative forcing associated with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, other parameters — such as water availability, heat indices and extreme event occurrences — may behave in more complex ways. We have developed a method for using spatio-temporal data from global and regional climate forecasts to identify whether they show non-linear time evolutions. These non-linear evolutions can include increasing/decreasing sensitivity with time, as well as "turning" points in which initial responses differ in both sign and magnitude from longer-term responses. Preliminary results from regional climate forecasts for the Northeastern US, as well as from global climate forecasts for the Western US, indicate a strong non-linear response in soil moisture, with initial increases in both regions, followed by substantial drops once CO2 concentrations reach twice pre-industrial levels. This type of information can subsequently be used for local and region mitigation and adaptation activities in response to global climate change.

We will also use the NARCCAP data to further investigate physical and socio-economic impacts that arise from regional climate variations resulting from increased greenhouse gas concentrations over the next century. Previous results have focused upon the summertime climate for the Northeastern US. In this region, overall summertime precipitation totals are expected to increase over the northern and southern portions of the domain but decrease across the central portions; heavy-rainfall events are expected to increase across almost the entire domain, both with respect to frequency as well as intensity. Increased evaporation combined with increased temperatures are also expected to significantly increase the daily maximum heat index for the region; in addition, the number of days with extremely high heat-index values are expected to increase by approximately 450% and for certain regions days with heat index values that reach 32.2°C (90°F) — the level of "extreme caution" —could occur approximately 40-50% of the time during summer. Future research will focus on refining these results using data derived from the NARCCAP. In addition, future work will examine similar hydrologic variations over the southwestern U.S., which is expected to be strongly and imminently impacted by anthropogenic-induced climate change. In these regions, the combination of warmer regional temperatures, recurrent drought, and increasing populations all point to future conflicts among water users.

Christopher J. Anderson

email: christopher.j.anderson@noaa.gov

Christopher J. Anderson is Lead Mesoscale Modeler at the NOAA/ESRL/GSD in Boulder, CO.

For the past 2 years, his primary task has been to manage all weather forecast demonstration projects within ESRL/GSD/FAB. These typically include forecasts of 1-day to 3-day lead time. An effort has been established to develop regional climate modeling techniques for assessments of extremes in precipitation. Also, connections have been established with the Western Water Assessment. Prior to Christophers work at NOAA/ESRL, he was employed at Iowa State University where he contributed to the Project to Intercompare Regional Climate Simulations and the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Project.

Research

1. Examination of warm season precipitation extremes including daily rates and water cycle dynamics.
2. Examination of Colorado River Basin variables that are critical to hydrological impacts, such as snow pack, run off, and summertime monsoon precipitation. Assess impacts by working with hydrologists and water managers.
3. Examination of winter time precipitation and snow pack in the Sierra Mountains.

Faron Anslow

email: fanslow@eos.ubc.ca

Post Doctoral Researcher at University of British Columbia

Research

Our research group is working on model simulations of glaciers across north america during the past 30 years (using NARR) and into the future hopefully using NARRCAP.

We will be looking at the surface energy balance of glaciers to determine surface mass balance and, consequently, their response to climate. To generate the surface energy balance we will be using surface and pressure-level variables of moisture, condensed species, radiation fluxes, temperature and pressure (roughly speaking).

We anticipate that, using a range of simulated future climate, we will be able to constrain the magnitude of ice volume loss (or gain) of North America over the next hundred years or so.

Richard Anyah

email: anyah@ucar.edu

Richard Anyah is a Research Associate in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University and also currently a Visiting Scientist at NCAR, in MMM Division under the UCAR-Africa Initiative.

He got his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science in Summer, 2005 from North Carolina State University under the direction of Prof. Fredrick Semazzi. He then moved to Rutgers University in Fall, 2005 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Environmental Science and then became a Research Associate Scientist from Fall, 2006 the position he still holds to date. Currently he is also organizing a Regional Climate Modeling Inter-comparison Project for the Greater Horn of Africa (AFRMIP), which is partially funded by NSF.

Research

Richard's primary research focus has been on understanding land surface-atmospheric interactions and feedbacks and the coupled climate variability of the two intimately connected systems. In particular, he has been interested in studying the physical and dynamical mechanisms and role large inland freshwater lakes and high mountains plays on Eastern Africa Climate variability and change. He has used regional climate models as the primary investigative tool over the past several years.

At Rutgers he has also been in a broad interdisciplinary collaboration with a diverse group of scientists to study the impact of groundwater reservoir (water table dynamics) on the simulated hydroclimatic variability over North America

Therefore, his interests on NARCCAP are twofold:

1. Dynamical Dowscaling of NARCCAP RCM and time slice output over North America to investigate characteristic variability in the hydrological cycle and/or hydroclimatic conditions over North America and specific sub-regions.
2. As the PI of NSF-funded AFRMIP project he would also like to initiate interaction and collaboration not only with the PI.s of NARCCAP, but also NARCCAP users in order to learn useful organization lessons and challenges that could help in planning AFRMIP activities.

Daniel Bader

email: dab2145@columbia.edu

Daniel Bader is a Programmer at the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University. He works with Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig's Climate Impacts at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Presently, he is assisting the group with projects focusing on climate change impacts in New York City and New York State. In addition, he is working on projects that are exploring climate change impacts in the Southeastern United States and Central America.

Research

The Climate Impacts Group at NASA GISS is interested in NARCCAP output for several potential applications:

1. Drive further downscaling with the WRF-ARW model to the metropolitan level
2. Directly drive impact assessment models (of agriculture, energy, health, municipal applications, and/or water resource management)
3. Examine the sensitivity of large-scale circulation patterns to climate scenarios
4. Determine the statistics of extreme events in participating models
5. Evaluate the ensemble and member statistics to determine whether NARCCAP-like projects are justified for climate impact assessments in other regions of the world.

Barry Baker

email: bbaker@tnc.org

Barry Baker, Ph.D. is currently working as ecosystem scientist for The Nature Conservancy's Climate Change Team. He received his doctorate from Colorado State University in 1991 where his research focused on the effects of climate change on grassland/livestock ecosystems. More recently he has been using climate and dynamic vegetation models to identify potential impacts of climate change on ecosystems in northwestern Yunnan China. In addition he is working with several universities, and national laboratories in the US to conduct regional-scale climate change vulnerability and impact analyses and incorporating results into conservation planning. His research interests include bioclimatology, biogeography, and terrestrial ecosystem modeling for predicting the impacts of climate change on biodiversity especially in grassland and high altitude ecosystems.

Research

Barry is collaborating with several vegetation modelling groups (SAGE, LPJ, MC1, and Century) to simulate impacts of climate change on terrestrial systems. He will be using the data provided by the NARCCAP as climate forcings for the various vegetation models. Results will be used to help guide conservation strategies and evaluate ecosystem processes.

Ed Bensman

email: ebensman@nd.edu
website: http://crc.nd.edu

My name is Ed Bensman. I hold a Ph.D. in meteorology from Florida State University (2000) under the direction of Prof. T.N. Krishnamurti. My professional interests are in Numerical Weather Prediction from planetary (climate) scale to mesoscale phenomena. I am currently with the Center for Research Computing at the University of Notre Dame. I have a number of colleagues here who are interested in climate simulations for the purposes of: migration of aquatic and terrestrial invasive species; largely over the Great Lakes region of the U.S. I am also working with other investigators evaluating the role of climate change on malaria control and eradication over the Lake Victoria region of Africa and in Indonesia; both of which are obviously outside the domain of NARCCAP. I was not familiar with NARCCAP until I read about it on the ESG web page. My research interest is described below.

Research

My specific interest in the NARCCAP data is two-fold: one as a teaching tool for multi-disciplinary researchers interested in regional climate change and also as a . Without the benefit of evaluating the NARCCAP data I cannot fully comment on its utility. I can however speculate that these data might fulfill the needs of investigators to the point that it is unnecessary for me to perform similar regional climate simulations, forced from a global model, over the Great Lakes region. My short term interest is in evaluating the utility of these NARCCAP data for investigators locally. My longer term goal is regional climate modeling over the Great Lakes region using the new WRF3.0 nested regional climate modeling capability.

Robert Beyer

email: rdbeyer@iastate.edu

Iowa State University

Research

Main Research Goals:

Compare the dew formation and dissipation data output by RCMs against observational data to investigate end-user usefulness-especially with regard to agriculture and food security.

Research Methods:

Conduct comparative studies between RCM output and observational data to assess the temporal and spatial precision and accuracy of RCMs with regard to dew formation and dissipation. Furthermore, this information will permit deeper investigation of RCM to observational disparities such that RCM improvements will become beneficial to the end-user.

Research Plan:

1. Investigate the ability of RCMs to replicate/generate surface wetness data.
2. Conduct statistical analysis of model outputs against observational data to assess the temporal and spatial precision and accuracy of RCMs.
3. Investigate RCM bias with regard to dew formation and dissipation.
4. Report the findings of this investigation to appropriate publications for dissemination.

Data Needed:

All biogeophysical variables that affect the formation and dissipation of dew.

Anticipated Findings or Significance:

This research will investigate RCMs' treatment of dew formation and dissipation with the intention to improve RCM projections and data products for end-user application-in this particular case, agriculture.

Celine Bonfils

email: bonfils2@llnl.gov

I work at PCMDI (LLNL) with Ben Santer, Tom Phillips and Dean Williams. The heart of my research is the investigation of the nature and causes of regional climate change using global climate models simulations and observational records. My research interests include the evaluation of climate model performance, the detection of anthropogenic influence on temperature changes in western United States, the role of expanding irrigated lands on regional climate, the examination of the nature and definition of low-frequency climate modes of variability, and the mechanisms that can trigger abrupt climate changes in the future.

Research

I am interested in the mechanisms that can trigger future abrupt climate change. In particular, I am studying mega-droughts in the southwest of North America, with an emphasis on the role of subsurface. For this project, I need to find first drought-conducive sea surface temperatures. These SSTs will be used to forced the CCSM3 model to provide lateral boundary condition to the regional model WRF. I will be using CCSM3.0 control run, 20c3m run and the A1b simulations performed with T42 CCSM3.0. Some of these data are dedicated to NARCCAP members. This study should help us to understand what are the mechanisms that can increase the likelihood of mega-drought occurrence in the Southwest.

Jared Bowden

email: bowden.jared@epa.gov

PhD. Atmospheric Science; North Carolina State University

Worked with Fred Semazzi performing dynamical downscaling over the Greater Horn of Africa. Currently NRC Postdoc at the EPA helping to serve as a source for climate related issues and perform regional climate model simulations.

109 T.W. Alexander Drive
National Exposure Research Laboratory, E243-01
Research Triangle Park, NC 27711
phone: 919-541-5258

Research

This data will help to provide a means of determining the uncertainty for our downscaled climate change simulations. Also, the data will help to characterize the risk for certain impacts, such as air quality.

David Bronaugh

email: bronaugh@uvic.ca
website: http://www.pacificclimate.org

I do data analysis, acquisition, management, and programming for the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium.

Research

PCIC is interested in regional analysis of impacts and is interested in using RCM results for illustrative purposes as well as using the results to drive further statistical downscaling or hydrological and other impacts models.

Melissa Bukovsky

email: melissa.bukovsky@noaa.gov

Melissa Bukovsky is currently working on a Ph.D. in Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma under the guidance of Dr. David Karoly. She finished a M.S. in meteorology at OU in 2004. A paper based on her Master's work was published in Weather and Forecasting in June 2006 and was entitled "Bowing convective systems in a popular operational model: Are they for real?" Before moving to Norman, OK, Melissa lived in the Chicago area where she completed a B.S. in meteorology at Northern Illinois University in 2002 after receiving an Associate in Science from the College of DuPage. Her current research is focused on precipitation in climate models. Specifically, Melissa is looking at the sensitivity of precipitation to convective parameterization and model resolution, potential future changes in regional precipitation in different climate change scenarios, and the implication of precipitation changes in surface hydrology.

Research

The NARCCAP project and my current area of research are very closely related, so I plan to use NARCCAP data to expand my work. Since I am currently downscaling output from the CCSM using the WRF to look at the impact of climate change on warm-season precipitation on sub-continental scales, I would like to analyze my data alongside that which is produced by NARCCAP. I will be focusing on summertime convection: its intensity, distribution, frequency, diurnal cycle, etc. Assuming that we will be using different WRF setups, it will likely allow me to expand my sensitivity study on the impact of parameterization choice as well. NARCCAP data may also be used in the distributed hydrologic model I plan to run using my downscaled data. Due to computational limitations, I will only be downscaling warm-season months. Provided that it is available in time, NARCCAP data would allow me to run the hydrologic model for full years, which would be more appropriate in the basin I am studying (the upper Arkansas). I am also currently working on a side-project with two other graduate students from two different departments where we are statistically downscaling climate model output to look at the impact of climate change on species propagation in two different, biologically diverse regions of the world. This study could also be expanded to make use of the NARCCAP output, as it would certainly remove some of the uncertainties created by the degree to which we are currently downscaling model output that may not be capturing 20th century precipitation realistically to start.

Peter Caldwell

email: caldwell19@llnl.gov

Since 9/07 I have been a postdoc at Lawrence Livermore National Lab where I am working on regional climate modeling over California with Dave Bader. Before that I got my Ph.D. in atmospheric science at the University of Washington under the tutelage of Chris Bretherton. During that time I focused on subtropical low clouds and their potential climate feedbacks. I have broad interests in climate change and climate feedbacks, and most of my research involves modeling and model validation.

Research

I am curious if the NCEP-forced NARCCAP simulations show consistent precipitation biases over California and if so, whether these biases stem from consistent errors in the character of their precipitation (ie exaggerated frequency or intensity). An informal literature review suggests that all models will show an overestimate of precipitation, though I'm not sure if the reason for this will be consistent among models.

Alex Cannon

email: alex.cannon@ec.gc.ca
website: http://www.eos.ubc.ca/public/people/grad/A.Cannon.html

University of British Columbia - Climate Prediction Group
Meteorological Service of Canada - Pacific & Yukon Region
201-401 Burrard Street, Vancouver, BC, V6C 3S5
Tel (604) 664-9245, Fax (604) 664-9004

Research

My primary interest is in development of multisite, multivariate statistical downscaling algorithms, and dynamical-statistical downscaling is on the radar.

Greg Carbone

email: greg.carbone@sc.edu

Greg Carbone is Associate Professor of Geography, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA. His research interests center on climate variability and change and impacts on agriculture and water resources. Some of his recent research papers on these topics have appeared in Agronomy Journal, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Climatic Change, Integrated Assessment, Journal of Climate, and Journal of the American Water Resources Association. He is a principal investigator for the Carolinas Integrated Science and Assessment group, part of the NOAA-RISA program. He holds a B.A. from Clark University, an M.A. from the University of Kansas, and a Ph. D from the University of Wisconsin.

Research

The Carolinas Integrated Sciences and Assessments group is partnering with Dr. Larry Band at the University North Carolina to examine the impacts of climate variability and change on stream flow and water quality in the Carolinas. The project reflects our collective effort to understand the hydroclimatology of large watersheds in the Carolinas, and to develop related decision support tools for resource managers in these watersheds. The goals of this specific venture include: statistical evaluation of general circulation model (GCM) and regional climate model (RCM) output for the Carolinas, measurement of hydrologic model sensitivity to a suite of meteorological inputs, and comparison of output generated by the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and Hydrologic Simulation Program-Fortran (HSPF) models.

Jim Carleton

email: carleton.jim@epa.gov

I'm the Modeling Team Leader in EPA's Office of Water, and also a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland. My interests in both these realms lie primarily in pollutant fate and transport modeling, and improving simulation methods for pollutants passing through natural or engineered bioenvironments (e.g. treatment wetlands).

Research

I'm interested in the possible use of NARCCAP data to drive watershed models that are used to make regulatory (water quality) and watershed-planning decisions. I'm especially interested in exploring the potential use of this data within the 'BASINS' Decision Support System, possibly in combination with the recently-developed Climate Assessment Tool ('CAT'), which allows modelers to modify historical weather files in order to explore potential consequences of different climate change scenarios on stream flow and pollutant export.

Christy Carlson

email: ccarlson@aer.com

Graduate Student, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
M.S.P.M, University of Oklahoma, 2004
BS, Meteorology/Climatology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2002

Currently employed by AER (Atmospheric and Environmental Research), working as contractor for the United States Air Force at the Air Force Weather Agency within the Specialized Models branch.

Research

Planning to study land-use changes and their effect upon the regional climate of the High Plains. Crop and irrigation, specifically. Plan to use several data sets covering a range of scenarios.

Carol Clayson

email: cclayson@fsu.edu
website: http://casil.met.fsu.edu

Associate Professor, Department of Meteorology
Director, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Institute
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4520

B.S., 1988, Brigham Young University, Physics and Astronomy;
M.S. (1990) and Ph.D. (1995) University of Colorado, Boulder (Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sci., Aerospace Engineering Sci.)

Research

I am interested in downloading climate and regional models for comparison to data to investigate atmospheric responses to seasonal AMOC variability. This is a proposal for exploratory research of the atmospheric response to a potential slow-down of the AMOC. We propose to explore two closely related aspects of this issue. One aspect is to determine whether observations support local atmospheric warming near regions of reduced ocean convection. Since there is no deep-water formation in the Atlantic during the summer, we will view the spring as a period of AMOC weakening and the fall as a period of AMOC strengthening. We will examine the extensive records of atmospheric temperatures from various European stations downstream of the convection sites, a much shorter time series of satellite-derived air temperatures over the ocean, and a long time series of SST.

Goals: This is an analysis in the area of longer-time scale coupled atmosphere-ocean scales of variability, particularly the Meridional Overturning Circulation of the Atlantic Ocean. An improved understanding of the air-sea heat exchange and resulting temperature differences throughout the upper ocean/lower atmosphere is a necessary component of understanding how the ocean may play a role in climate variability through the AMOC. Our work will provide both a better theoretical understanding of the issues at hand and also an analysis of the extent to which our current climate data records can help resolve these issues. It will furthermore provide some guidance to current climate models regarding AMOC issues.

Our work will supplement the efforts presently directed toward the understanding of climate change by:

• Analyzing land atmospheric temperatures records downstream of the convection region to see whether there have been any significant changes associated with the idea of a reduced AMOC.
• Analyzing SST within the convection regions and upstream of these regions to see whether there has been a trend in its variability during the last 50 years.
• Analyzing satellite-derived air temperatures over the ocean areas to determine whether they are capable of retrieving similar signals.
• Analyzing the impact of horizontal atmospheric diffusionthat associated with the region above (and downstream) the oceanic convectionon the distribution of atmospheric heat downstream of the convection site.
• Developing a framework to theoretically analyze the role of freshwater fluxes in the heat exchange process associated with the AMOC. This includes the incorporation of moisture and water vapor into the SN and Nof et al. 2009 models.
• Determining which mechanisms control the convection-induced heat exchange between the ocean and the air. This is a necessary step toward a complete view of the heat exchange, and will help improve the representation of convection in climate and numerical weather prediction models.
• Comparing regional and climate models to determine how their results with respect to this issue based on resolution and parameterizations differ from each other and from the in situ and satellite observations.

Broad impact: The proposed research will enhance our societal ability to deal with global warming, as it will shed light on the anticipated climatic changes. It goes almost without saying that our understanding of the AMOC should also be useful in various political and economic areas outside geophysics. Global climate models are wonderful tools when one can confidently rely on what they predict. Here, we propose to focus on an important process whose present representation in these models is far from certainthe convective AMOC. We propose to test the analytically based hypothesis that the almost-uniform numerical prediction of cooling due is probably not exclusively due to an AMOC slow down. We suspect that it is perhaps due to high diffusivities, changes in storm tracks or changes in ice cover. Again, our focus is not to examine the numerical models but rather focus on a comparison of the analytics to the observational data. We will do so by focusing on the seasonal variability of AMOC involving a reduction in the AMOC during spring (with no AMOC in the summer) and an increase in the fall.

Kayla Conrad

email: kconrad1@iastate.edu

I am currently working towards an M.S. degree in Meteorology at Iowa State University under our surface water hydrologist, Dr. Kristie Franz. I graduated in May 2008 with a B.S. in Meteorology also from Iowa State. My current research is focused on climate change impacts on hydrologic processes in the upper Midwest.

Research

I am using the operational National Weather Service (NWS) rainfall-runoff hydrologic modeling system (SAC-SMA) to conduct historical and future climate change assessments for the upper Midwest. My study is mainly focused on watershed- and daily-scale assessment of hydrologic model simulations of snow water equivalent, frozen ground, soil moisture content, and streamflow. I am using archived temperature, precipitation, and streamflow data from the NWS to conduct historical model runs, and would like to use NARCCAP regional climate projections to estimate future changes in the hydrologic cycle. I would also like to use the NARCCAP reanalysis data to understand RCM bias and to conduct any necessary bias adjustment on the climate change projections.

Adam Cornwell

email: acornwell@alumni.uwaterloo.ca

PhD University of Toronto
Assistant Professor, Lakehead University

Research

My goal in using the NARCCAP data is to produce a climatic change scenario for planning source water protection and water resource management. The data that I am immediately interested in pertains to the local region of Thunder Bay, Canada, and includes precipitation, evaporation, snow and ice cover fields. In addition to academic interest, the work will contribute to source water protection planning under Ontario provincial legislation.

James Correia

email: james.correia@pnl.gov

Research

I am a post doc at PNNL working on improving the WRF regional climate model. My main focus is on the warm season with emphasis on severe weather environments and precipitation production. I will be conducting studies which relate the frequency of occurrence of severe storms to state and derived variables from the model output.

The goal of this work to assess the current deficiencies in the model and use them to as a guide for uncertainty measures in assessing the impact of climate change on severe storm environment frequency. I will be further examining the model output for physical process studies which can help explain why the model is deficient and make recommendation as to what can be done to alleviate or fix some of these issues.

Jack Creilson

email: jack@geo.umass.edu

Climate System Research Center
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003

Research

Our interest in the NARCCAP data is to conduct phenological studies utilizing GCM/RCM simulations of climate over the next several decades to the end of the century. Some retrospective studies suggest that certain climate change indices display trends that are similar to the observed phenological records, specifically linking plant development with its basic climate drivers. Our goal is to analyze daily output of multiple GCM/RCM simulations of future climate to see how critical plant-related aspects of climate (i.e., temperature, freeze periods) are projected to change over time and space, focusing on North America for the 2010 to 2100 time period.

Indrani Das

email: indrani@gi.alaska.edu

Post Doctoral Fellow
Snow Ice and Permafrost Group
Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks
903 Koyukuk Drive. P.O. Box No 757320
Alaska 99775-7320

Research

Study of the precipitation patterns using orographic precipitation model

Indrani Das, Craig Lingle, Chris Larsen, Regine Hock
Geophysical Institute
University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska, USA

Aim of the project: To obtain orographic precipitation patterns over a 1 km/1 km grid over the glaciers in Alaska using LT Model.

Description of the project: It is important to address the problem of the rate the glaciers are thinning and what is their contribution to the rise in sea level. Estimation of volume changes by laser altimeters provides a means to estimate the amount of glacial wastage by calculating its mass balance. Also the changing climate is changing the precipitation patterns over the globe. At places like Mt. Logan, the precipitation is actually increasing leading to a positive mass balance in those areas.

I am currently working as a Post Doctoral fellow using laser altimetry data to estimate volume changes for the glaciers in Alaska. I am also using a orographic precipitation model which will simulate the precipitation patterns over high elevations where we have no altimetry data and will help us better address the problem of extrapolation of volume changes to unmeasured areas.

My research will also help to understand the coupling of atmosphere and the glaciers, whether the changing climate is also increasing the amount of precipitation above certain elevations and how fast are the glaciers thinning. Whether climate influences have increased over large glaciers having high accumulation areas? Large volumes of altimeter data are available in our group, which I intend to use to study the volume changes of the glaciers and their contribution to rise in sea level.

For this I require the meteorological parameters like wind direction, speed, Specific Humidity, Temperature at the highest resolution available (0.5 degrees) from 1957 to the current date available.

Results expected: To develop a precipitation map over the entire state of Alaska from 1957 to the current available date and understand the climate effects at higher elevation where we have no altimeter data. It will help us to extrapolate our results to the highest elevations and give a more accurate estimation of the contribution of Alaskan glaciers to sea level rise.

Neil Davis

email: neild@email.unc.edu

Worked with Dr. Fred Semazzi on regional climate research for my masters at NCSU. After graduating I have been working at the Institute for the Environment at UNC Chapel Hill with a focus on air quality modeling.

Research

I plan on using the NARCCAP data to compare against climate simulations I am currently performing for use in air quality applications. Additionally we may look to downscale the NARCCAP simulations for future year air quality studies.

Stephan De Wekker

email: dewekker@virginia.edu
website: http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/~atmos/De_Wekker_Lab/Home.html

My research focuses on the investigation of atmospheric boundary layer processes in complex terrain using a combination of field studies, data analysis, and numerical modeling. I seek to apply my expertise to problems in the multi-disciplinary context such as found at the interface with ecology and hydrology.

Contact Information:

Stephan de Wekker, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
University of Virginia
Department of Environmental Sciences
291 McCormick Rd.
P.O. Box 400123
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4123 USA

Phone: 434-924-3324 (office) 434-823-2664 (home)
Fax: 434-982-2137

Research

Our major goal is to investigate feedbacks between land cover change and atmospheric boundary layer dynamics that may contribute to shrub encroachment in the southwestern US. Woody plant encroachment into grasslands is a global phenomenon that results from a variety of global change drivers. Over the last 150 years the southwestern United States has undergone dramatic changes in the composition and structure of vegetation due to the encroachment of woody vegetation. We are developing field and modeling activities to investigate and quantify the feedbacks between shrub encroachment and the consequent changes in surface energy balance in the southwestern US. Results from our field activities indicate a large change in minimum temperatures induced by shrub encroachment during the winter months.

We would like to use NARCCAP data to investigate the changes in minimum temperatures on a decadal time scale in the southwestern US and compare these changes with those induced by shrub encroachment. The results will contribute to understanding the potential feedbacks between land cover change, climate change,and microclimate.

Art DeGaetano

email: atd2@cornell.edu
website: http://www.nrcc.cornell.edu

I am a professor and associate chair of with the department of Earth and Atmospheric Science at Cornell University. I am also the director of the Northeast Regional Climate Center (NRCC). As a faculty member and NRCC director my research interests include the application of climate data to sector-specific decisions and changes and the observed land-based climate record.

Research

Increasingly the NRCC is being called upon to provide data, information and decision tools to stakeholders interested in assessing and/or mitigating their risk to climate change. These requests are far reaching involving water resources, agriculture, ecosystems and environmental issues. As an author of the Northeast Climate Assessment Report (NECIA) I have been increasing called upon to extend our results to different user specific concerns. I anticipating using these data to complement the downscaled climate data used in the NECIA. Currently we are interested in changes in rainfall extremes, snow pack characteristics and temperature data. We are working with several entomological models to assess changes in mosquito abundance as well as habitat expansion for invasive pests. We are also assessing changes in agricultural fungicide usage under climate change conditions.

Matthias Demuzere

email: matthias.demuzere@ees.kuleuven.be

Research

The main goal of our research within the CLIMAQS project is to find out whether spectral nudging improves the model results of quantities important for air quality and precipitation assessment. To find out, we would like to use existing model output data instead of performing a long-term run ourselves.

David Díaz

email: davidmz@atmosfera.unam.mx

I am a student of atmospheric sciences at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM). The main research goal of my thesis is evaluate the most probable future conditions of temperature and precipitation under climate change scenarios for Mexico, also determining characteristics of a statistical downscaling compared to dynamical.

Research

It is done a statistical downscaling to most of the participating models in the IPCC AR4 in the SRESA2, SRESA1B, SRESB1 and COMMITTED scenarios, although our interest is focus only in models simulating good enough the observed trend. The statistical downscaling was made by principal components regression using the CRU data base as a predictand field. It was used the XX century control run to calibrate the transfer functions in the period 1901-1970, and 1971-1999 as independent sample.

Comparing the NARCCAP output data of dynamical regional climate models with our data base we'll determine some of the main share features, advantages and disadvantages of a statistical downscaling against dynamical, besides the enormous advantage of cheap computational and human requirements. The main findings are that a statistical downscaling is good enough compared to dynamical to assess regional scenarios.

Yonas Dibike

email: Yonas.Dibike@ec.gc.ca
website: http://w-circ.uvic.ca/

Physical Scientist, Hydro-Climate Analysis & Impact Studies
Aquatic Ecosystems Impacts Research Division
Science and Technology Branch
Environment Canada

Adjunct Assistant Professor
Water & Climate Impact Research Centre
University of Victoria
PO Box 3060 STN CSC
Victoria, BC, V8W 3R4

Research

I am a researcher at the water & Climate Impact Research Centre (W-CIRC) at the University of Victoria in BC, Canada and I work with Prof. Terry Prowse who is the director of the institute. Our research at the W-CIRC focuses on hydrologic and ecological impacts of atmospheric change and variability. Specific examples of W-CIRC research include climate impacts on floods and droughts, groundwater systems, river and lake ice, forest hydrology, lake heat and energy budgets of lakes, alpine and reservoir water supplies, and aquatic ecology. Current W-CIRC research includes:

• climate change impacts on cold regions hydro-ecology
• climate impacts on river ice jams
• climate impacts on peatland and permafrost hydrology
• lake thermal responses to climate change
• climate impacts on aquatic food webs
• climate impacts on groundwater systems
• hydro-climatology of western and northern water resources
• climate impacts on ice-covered aquatic systems

In most cases, we would like to use simulation outputs from different RCMs driven by different GCMs and emission scenarios to simulate the range of possible hydrologic and ecological impacts and the uncertainties associated with them. Access to the NARCCAP data base will help us do our impact research more effectively and greatly enhance our ability to produce a comprehensive impact analysis for the various research project we are undertaking at our research centre.

James Dryden

email: jdryden@okstate.edu

Research

Researching the potential climate change impacts on wind resources in Oklahoma

The overall goal is to forecast changes in wind power density across Oklahoma in order to keep Oklahoma's wind industry as economically robust as possible as well as keep provide a look at possible future changes in wind resources as a result of anthropogenic climate change. I plan to do this by taking past wind climate observations from NCDC (and possibly similar resources) and choose a few GFDL, IPCC, NCAR, etc. GCM's for reanalysis runs as well as future runs containing CO2 emission scenarios. I most likely will take a statistical/empirical downscaling approach to increase model agreement and spatial resolution in order to capture mesoscale/microscale processes that often affect wind regimes. I will be using some statistical methods such as root-mean-square-error as well as other methods such as tree-structured regression to validate model accuracy and to downscale, respectively. I plan to compute changes in wind regimes and provide some potential percent decrease/increase in wind power density that would be of use/interest to people involved in the wind industry in Oklahoma such as investors, land owners, state energy department, etc.

Qingyun Duan

email: qduan@llnl.gov

Qingyun Duan, Ph.D.
Research Scientist
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Tel: 925-422-7704

Research interests: climate downscaling, uncertainty quantification, water resource impact studies

Research

I am interested in obtaining regional climate model outputs, particularly precipitation and temperature outputs, and use them as inputs to water resources models. Though I am not a climate modeler, I am interested in interpreting climate model outputs from multiple models and obtain an estimate of uncertainty from multimodel outputs.

Currently I am working on a project titled: "Enhancing California's water decision support system". This project, funded by UC DOE Lab Management Fees Research Program, intends to study the potential extremes for California water resources as a result of climate change. The main goal of the project is to investigate how water decision support system - CalSim model - operates under climate change scenarios. Toward this goal, we will need (a) downscaled climate projection for California, (b) information about uncertainties in the CalSim solutions, and (c) development of the water management solution with risk assessment associated with climate change.

Hugh Ellis

email: hugh.ellis@jhu.edu

Research
I am the PI of an ongoing EPA STAR project. I would like to obtain GCM output suitably transformed for use with MM5 (via regridder) to conduct regional air quality simulations for a variety of climate change scenarios.

Methodology for Assessing the Effects of Technological and Economic Changes on the Location, Timing, and Ambient Air Quality Impacts of Power Sector Emissions

The sensitivity of the amounts, locations, and timing of power sector emissions to economic and technological assumptions has two important implications. One is the need for a theoretically defensible, transparent, and practical methodology for determining future scenarios of emissions locations and timing. This framework will be provided by the use of a sequence of market-equilibrium models constrained by land use and emissions limits. First, the HAIKU model will be used to disaggregate national technology, demand, and emissions totals for a given scenario year (such as those that might result from IPCC scenarios) to regions. Second, finer scaled regional models will allocate specific generation facilities to the U.S. national grid comprised of 36x36 km cells, and will estimate their hourly emissions.

The second implication is the need to test the robustness of the emissions disaggregations to assumptions concerning load growth, technological change, and policies, such as emissions caps. We propose to systematically explore the sensitivity of both emissions and ambient air quality results to these uncertainty drivers mentioned above in order to assess which assumptions matter most. Ambient air quality for an example set of scenarios will be simulated using MM5/MCIP/SMOKE/CMAQ. In addition to showing how robustness of ambient concentrations can be assessed, this will also demonstrate the practicality of integrating the source disaggregation methodology with the SMOKE emissions processing system and subsequently, the CMAQ transport and fate model itself.

Xingang Fan

email: xingang.fan@wku.edu

Assistant Professor
Dept. Geography & Geology
Western Kentucky University

Interested in climate modeling, climate impact study, numerical weather modeling

Research

To study the impact of climate change on regional ecosystem modeling. I plan to further downscale NARCCAP data (e.g., MM5I/CCSM) using the WRF model to provide input to an ecosystem model. The main goals are to investigate forest ecosystems under a changing climate.

Zuber Farooqui

email: ZFarooqui@eng.tamuk.edu

Research

Overview
Surface ozone is a secondary air pollutant known to cause extensive air quality problems. The South Texas region consists of a number of coastal and inland urban areas classified by Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to be in near non-attainment status of the 8 hour ozone standard. These near non-attainment areas (NNA) have to demonstrate appropriate planning processes to continue to remain in attainment. This issue becomes even more crucial since the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has lowered the 8 hour ozone standard from current value of 85 ppb to 75 ppb which will result in widespread non-attainment problems in South Texas region. The USEPA has mandated the usage of certain sophisticated three-dimensional photochemical models for regulatory purposes. The modeling of dynamics of ozone processes is further complicated by the nonlinear nature of its formation. Advanced air quality modeling techniques are required to address this issue so that potential emission control strategies may be developed to combat the ozone problem.

There has been very little focus so far on the effect of climate variability on regional and urban ozone quality in the South Texas region. Rising temperatures due to climate change can substantially enhance ozone exceedances if the new standards are implemented. Emissions control policies in these parts are currently implemented by assuming the constancy of climate. The air quality modeling performed in this research study also addresses the significance of climate change on spatial and temporal responses in modeled peak surface 8 hour ozone concentrations and ozone exceedances due to potential temperature perturbations.

Overall the primary issues motivating the research study is to enhance the awareness of policy makers regarding the impact of climate change on surface 8 hr ozone concentrations so that future emission control policies for the South Texas region may be developed factoring the impact due to climate change.

Key knowledge gaps addressed by the project
Assess the impact of global climate change on surface ozone levels in South Texas region during the ozone episodes.

Scope of the work
It has illustrated the increasing importance of climate change towards regional air quality issues suggesting a comprehensive approach towards long-term emissions reduction strategies and climate change across different regions. The scope of the work includes the use of climate scenarios and emissions projected by Inter-government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) into photochemical model to find the impact of future climate change to the surface ozone levels in south and central Texas. North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) has provided high resolution climate change scenarios and investigated uncertainties in regional scale projections of future climate change. The output from the regional climate models (RCMs)/GCM nested over North America for the A2 SRES for current scenario (1/1/1968 - 12/31/2000) and a future scenario (1/1/2038 - 12/31/2070) is proposed to be utilized in the study. The present and projected future scenarios will be used in a regional scale photochemical model (CAMx) to simulate tropospheric ozone over south and central Texas.

Recent Accomplishments
Base case modeling simulations
The photochemical model CAMx was used in this study. The base case evaluation of the photochemical model simulations for both the high ozone episodes disclosed that the model simulated elevated ozone values was within the prescribed limit set by EPA. The model also captured well the diurnal variability of ozone observations. The ozone episode of 2002 had higher ozone values in Corpus Christi region in comparison to the 1999 ozone episode. This illustrates the importance of meteorology on ozone levels since the values of peak ozone concentrations were higher in 2002 despite increasing implementation of emissions controls imposed on emission sources since 1999.

Impact of perturbed temperatures
A modeling study was performed to identify the potential impact of temperature perturbations on tropospheric ozone concentrations in South and Central Texas. The temperatures were increased uniformly throughout the simulation domain and through the vertical layers by 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 °C in accordance to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report by Meehl et al. (2007). The results revealed that global temperature rise could significantly impact peak 8-hour ozone concentrations and 8-hour ozone exceedances especially in the urban regions of South and Central Texas. The maximum impact in both the cases is in the San Antonio urban region, Austin and in the counties north-east of Victoria close to Houston-Galveston area. The results disclose that climate interactions play an increasingly important role in local and regional air quality background concentrations. The issue of climate change becomes even more important in case of more stringent 8 -hr ozone standards. Hence, climate change should be considered in developing emissions control strategies and setting future ozone standards.

Broader perspectives of this research and benefit to the nation
The increasingly hemispheric nature of air quality problems (Akimoto 2003) linked with global processes brings forth the debate that future emission control strategies cannot be developed in isolation in a particular region. The strategies need to be developed conjunctively with other regions. In order to accomplish this it is important to accurately determine the ozone dynamics and the relative contribution of emissions from each region. The study has accomplished these objectives over the South and Central Texas regions. It has also emphatically illustrated the increasing importance of climate change towards regional air quality issues thereby suggesting a coordinated approach towards long-term emissions reduction strategies and climate change across different regions while dealing with both future air quality development and climate change.

In addition to climate change, land use changes and increasing anthropogenic emissions, which are products of expanding urbanization, will add to temperature amplifications (Civerolo et al. 2007). They will play an important role in determining the future air quality. The effects of increasing urbanization also needs to be factored in along with climate change to develop emission control strategies across different regions. The present study did not model the effects of increasing urbanization and focused on climate change alone. The modeling results presented here despite being limited by uncertainties provides a first insight on how to develop effective emission control stratgies in case of climatic perturbations over South and Central Texas. This modeling study can serve as a paradigm at the national level.

References

1. Akimoto H. 2003. Global Air Quality and Pollution. Science 302, 5651:1716-1719.
2. Civerolo, Kevin, C. Hogrefe, B. Lynn, J. Rosenthal, J. Y. Ku, W. Solecki, J. Cox, C. Small, C. Rosenzweig, R. Goldberg, K. Knowlton, and P. Kinney. 2007. Estimating effects of increased urbanization on surface meteorology and ozone concentrations in the New York City Metropolitan region. Atmospheric Environment, 41:1803-1818.
3. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 2007. Climate Change 2007: The Scientific Basis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4. Seaman N. L. and S.A. Michelson. 2000. Mesoscale structure of a high ozone episode during the 1995 NARSTO-Northeast study. Journal of Applied Meteorology., 39:384-398.

John Fasullo

email: fasullo@ucar.edu
website: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Staff/Fasullo/index.html

I'm a Project Scientist in the Climate Analysis Section and work iteratively with observations and CMIP simulations to better understand both.

Research

I'm trying to better understand climate change in North America as it relates to model resolution, the benefits of regional nesting, and their larger implications for global simulations. I have substantial experience with the CMIP3 archive and anticipate trying to evaluate the potential benefits achieved through regional nested models.

Daniel Fernandez

email: daniel.fernandez@colorado.edu

I'm affiliated with the University of Colorado and I am interested in modeling carbon stock changes, fire, and species range changes, with climate change in lands administered by the San Juan Public Lands Center.

Research

Use high resolution climate chnages scenarios to model ecological changes in SW Colorado, specifically the area administered by the San Juan Public Lands Center.

1. Compile and orient GCM forecasts over topography, vegetation cover, etc. to show regional impacts—essentially developing clear visuals for model projections.
2. Analysis of historical simulations vs. actual climate for the targeted region. This is an important step for understanding the error associated with model forecasts and particular problem areas for simulations of SW Colorado. This analysis would be done for both the GFDL and CCSM output with the intent of evaluating which model provides more reliable output for the SW Colorado region.
3. Analysis of future simulations and comparison of model outputs. Two components here: one aspect would be to evaluate model differences, and use this in conjunction with the historical climate analysis to develop a range of potential impact projections for the region.
4. Prepare an overview of projections and uncertainties for local, state and federal staff. In part, the intent here would be to provide information on how the BLM/USFS can begin to take advantage of emerging national downscaling efforts.
5. Preliminary impact analysis for priority BLM/USFS areas.

Joel Finnis

email: jfinnis@mun.ca

Research

NARCCAP data will be used for statistical downscaling and probabilistic forecasting of extreme weather events under enhanced greenhouse conditions. Work will focus on the Canadian province of Newfoundland & Labrador, and will contribute to the provincial government's climate adaptation activities. The response of precipitation and associated hazards to a warming climate is of particular interest. This is a joint project between Memorial University of Newfoundland, Natural Resources Canada, and the provincial Department of Environment & Conservation.

Chris Fletcher

email: chris.fletcher@utoronto.ca

Research

We will be using the NARCCAP data to investigate cryosphere-atmosphere interaction and surface albedo feedbacks under climate change. We aim to compare results with previous research using output from global coupled models, thus assessing the impact on these phenomena from model spatial resolution and/or the complexity of land-surface and vegetation models.

Phillipe Gachon

email: philippe.gachon@mail.mcgill.ca

Research Scientist – Adaptation and Impacts Research Division
Atmospheric Science and Technology Directorate, Environment Canada @ McGill University, Montreal, Québec, Canada

Affiliations

• Adjunct Professor, Centre pour l'Étude et la Simulation du Climat à l'Échelle Régionale (ESCER), Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Québec at Montreal (UQAM), Montréal, Québec.
• Invited Professor, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Eau-Terre-Environnement (INRS-ETE), University of Québec, Québec.
• Associated member, Global Environmental and Climate Change Centre (GEC3) at McGill University (www.mcgill.ca/gec3).

Research

Current Research topic:

• High resolution extreme climate scenarios & Statistical downscaling methods
• Extremes analysis: temperature, precipitation, winds and hydrologic variables
• Dynamical downcaling
• Large/Mesoscale interactions under historical climate conditions

Main interests related to current project:

Funded project by the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council, (NSERC, Canada) in which both dynamical downscaling model (RCMs) and statistical downscaling tool (multisite) will be used to develop probabilistic assessment of regional changes in climate variability and extremes over Canada, in collaboration with ENSEMBLES European (RT2B/RT3 group) & US NARCCAP.

Team members (Canadian and partners) : Pr. VTV Nguyen (McGill), P. Gachon & X. Zhang (EC), Prs R. Laprise & C. Jones (UQAM), Prs TBMJ Ouarda & A. St-Hilaire (INRS-ÉTÉ), Pr. W. Hsieh (UBC), C. Goodess (CRU, UK), L. Mearns (NCAR, US), J. Christensen (DMI, Danemark) & G. Flato (CCCma, Canada).

Use of NARCCAP data and main objectives related to our current projects:

The main objectives and the current applications of RCMs simulations will be:

1. To analyse and validate the RCMs with others models over Canada based on climate extremes (current period)
2. To intercompare RCMs with the new generation of multisite statistical downscaling (SD) method developed in Canada and over regions in US in collaboration with NARCCAP;
3. To develop new series of predictors at the regional scale using the RCMs outputs and analyze the added values compared to GCMs atmospheric variables used in SD methods;
4. To discriminate the role of large versus regional scales influence in the occurrence, intensity and duration of extreme events over Canadian areas;
5. To construct high resolution climate changes across various selected regions in Canada with ensembles runs and with uncertainties analysis;
6. To evaluate and quantify the cascade of uncertainty from coarse scale (GCMs) to regional/local scale downscaling model (RCMs and SDs),
7. To help to develop reliable daily time series under climate change conditions for their applications in water resources, agriculture, risk management, and various areas in environmental modeling.

Yanhong Gao

email: yanhong@hydro.washington.edu

Research

We are working on dynamic downscaling focus on the Colorado River Basin. Initially, we will implement the "standard" climate version of WRF, as used by collaborator Ruby Leung in NARCCAP simulations, and will perform tests to assure that model output for runs equivalent to NARCCAP Phase 1 (reanalysis boundary conditions) are consistent. We will then implement the WRF-VIC version, and will evaluate differences between the "standard" WRF version and WRF-VIC. We will also evaluate differences between WRF-VIC land surface simulations and off-line VIC simulations. Once these initial benchmark runs have been completed, we will implement WRF-VIC for the 20th Century GCM simulations.Our final task will be to evaluate the nature and implications of land surface feedbacks in recent drought years.

Gregg Garfin

email: gmgarfin@email.arizona.edu

Dr. Garfin is a co-investigator on the Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) project. His CLIMAS work includes identifying climate services useful to assisting stakeholders mitigate, cope with, and adapt to climate-related risks. He is trained as a climatologist, dendroclimatologist, and geographer. His research interests include climate change, climate variability, and drought, and the effective delivery of climate science to decision makers. Much of his recent effort has been devoted to scientist-stakeholder processes that inform risk management and prepare for drought and adaptation to climate changes.

Dr. Garfin is a contributor to the U.S. Climate Change Science Program's Synthesis and Assessment Product 5.3. From 2003-2007, he served as co-chair of Arizona's drought monitoring technical committee. In 2004, he served as a member of the integrated team for the development of a National Integrated Drought Information System. He is also a climate science co-chair for the Arizona Water Institute.

Research

I am representating three projects with interests in using NARCCAP data: the Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) project, the University of Arizona Institute for the Study of Planet Earth (ISPE), and a National Institute for Climate Change Research (NICCR) project on future vegetation changes in the Colorado Plateau. My CLIMAS and ISPE colleagues propose to use NARCCAP data in the following ways:

1. To help stakeholders in the southwestern United States prepare for climate changes, in particular, water management and ecosystem management adaptation planning. As an example, we are working closely with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality on a climate change adaptation plan for the state, and NARCCAP output will undoubtedly assist in this process.
2. We would like to present NARCCAP images, and perhaps data subsets, on our forthcoming climate change website. If feasible and permissible, we are interested in including NARCCAP output in a climate data explorer tool, which would allow users to peruse the data, in order to examine regions, parameters, and time periods of interest.
3. In public presentations about projected climate changes for the Southwest.
4. As inputs to research on potential climate change economic impacts to water resources, agriculture, tourism, and ranching. These projects are being conducted by CLIMAS colleagues Bonnie Colby and George Frisvold, as part of the CLIMAS 2007-2012 Phase III.

The NICCR project specifically requires fine spatial-scale data on projected temperature (minimum and maximum), precipitation, humidity, and evapotranspiration. These parameters will be input to a species-specific vegetation model, in order to project future changes in plant species range.

Eric Gilleland

email: ericg@ucar.edu
website: http://www.ral.ucar.edu/~ericg/

Research Applications Laboratory
National Center for Atmospheric Research

Research

My interest is in studying environments conducive to severe weather under a changing climate. Currently, I am looking at global reanalysis of a derivative of convective available potential energy (CAPE); specifically, Wmax=sqrt(2*CAPE); along with 0-6 km wind shear (shear). In particular, concurrently high values of these variables have been found to be associated with severe storms.

Nathan Gillett

email: Nathan.Gillett@ec.gc.ca
website: http://www.cccma.ec.gc.ca/people/ngillett.shtml

Research

Attribution of regional climate change over North America using regional model output

Research questions:

• Are regional models better than global climate models at:
  • Reproducing the mean state in temperature, precipitation.
  • Reproducing observed climate changes in temperature, precipitation?
• Validate against monthly mean station data - climatology and trends.
• Can RCM output be used in an attribution of North American temperature and/or precipitation changes? (having only an NCEP-forced run will present a challenge).

Methods: Optimal detection and attribution methods (e.g. Allen and Stott, 2003) will be used to attempt to separate that part of regional climate change which has been forced by chaning boundary conditions from that part associated with internal variability. 20th century simulations will be validated against North American station data to validate the climatology using RMS errors, correlations and other measures. Results will be compared with a similar analysis applied directly to the NCEP reanalysis itself.

Research Plan: Research to be carried out over 2009-2011.

Data: Primarily monthly mean precip and temperature from NCEP-forced simulations, though other data may be investigated.

Alice Gilliland

email: Gilliland.Alice@epamail.epa.gov

Alice Gilliland, Ph.D.
Chief, Model Evaluation and Applications Branch
Atmospheric Modeling Division
National Exposure Research Laboratory
U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development
USEPA Mailroom E243-01
109 T.W. Alexander Drive
Research Triangle Park, NC 27711
(919) 541-0347

Research

Main research goals: We are interested in future climate-related changes in atmospheric wet deposition of nutrients. We have some air quality and atmospheric deposition modeling results that rely on a regional downscaling scenario developed by Dr. Ruby Leung (see Leung and Gustafson, 2005; Gustafson and Leung, 2007). We would like to look at a range of precipitation pattern changes (current to future under A1B and A2 scenarios) to consider how different the wet deposition estimates of nutrients might be with different regional climate scenarios.

Research methods and plan: Our current regional-scale air quality modeling results include estimates of wet deposition of aerosol species, based on the regional downscaled results I mentioned above. Using a statistical model of wet deposition based on precipitation volume, we plan to estimate how different the model predicted deposition amounts would vary based on the NARCCAP precipitation fields.

What data are needed: We primarily just need the precipitation fields from the NARCCAP results.

Anticipated findings or significance of work: We hope to get a better feeling for how different the wet removal of air pollutants may be with different downscaled regional climate results and different IPCC scenarios.

Evan Girvetz

email: girvetz@u.washington.edu
website: http://faculty.washington.edu/girvetz/

Evan H. Girvetz
Postdoctoral Research Associate
College of Forest Resources
University of Washington
Box 352100
Seattle, WA 98195-2100

Research Interests:
Climate change impacts and adaptation assessment
Landscape Ecology
Geographic Information Systems
Decision support tool development
Statistical Analysis

Research

Research Goals:
Although there is overwhelming evidence of climate change and policy responses are being discussed, natural resource managers have found it difficult to develop management and planning responses to both recent and likely future climate changes. One reason for this slow response is the absence of tools that translate cutting-edge climate science and climate-model simulations into a form that a manager can work with at a local or regional scale (CCSP 2008). Although large amounts of data exist regarding how climate has and is projected to change at specific places globally, these data are stored in databases that can be difficult to access. Furthermore, although analytical techniques are available for quantifying the potential effects of these changes, many require significant computing resources and analytical expertise. Scientists, managers, and policy makers (i.e. practitioners) need the ability to assess the potential effects of climate change on specific ecological systems within specific geographic areas at relevant spatial scales. However, a major gap exists between the need for and the accessibility of practical climate change analysis tools.

Research methods:
I use computer-based technologies to develop tools that make climate-change analysis more accessible, practical, and useful. These technologies include geographic information systems (GIS), statistical analysis platforms (e.g. the R Project), and web-based mapping services (e.g. Google Maps, KML/GML, and SOAP). Specifically, I am developing a framework and web-based mapping tool for practical climate-change analysis, called ClimateWizard, that anyone can easily use to analyze climate change at a given site(s) around the world (in collaboration with researchers at The Nature Consevancy and University of Southern Mississippi). The ClimateWizard is freely available as an interactive website that produces climate-change maps, graphs, and tables (http://ClimateWiz.org). It provides access to a wide range of climate data (both past observed and future modeled) and runs statistical analyses that address relevant ecological questions within specific geographic areas. The ClimateWizard uses two common approaches to representing climate-change data: (1) comparing climate in a given year or time period to a baseline period (climatic departures); and (2) calculating statistical climatic trends over a time period of interest using linear regression analysis.

The ClimateWizard tool was designed to be accessible to a wide range of users, allowing virtually anyone to perform simple climate analyses for anywhere data are available. Users can select an analysis area from a set of provided base data layers (administrative and ecological boundaries), they can upload an ESRI Shapefile, or they can draw directly on the web-mapping interface. The ClimateWizard uses ArcGIS SOAP web-services to access a time-series database of climate information stored on a remote computer server, and then uses the server's computing power to create outputs in the form of graphs, maps, tables, and GIS data layers tailored to the specific climate-change question being asked by the user.

Research Plans:
I am interested in the possiblity of using ClimateWizard to analyse, visualize and explore the NARCCAP data.

Mark B. Green

email: greenmarkb@gmail.com

Water Systems Analysis Group
Complex Systems Research Center
Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space
University of New Hampshire
Work Phone: 603-862-1053
E-mail: mark.green@unh.edu

Research

Mark researches the role of the hydrologic cycle in biogeochemical cycling. He is am particularly interested in how water pathways through the hydrologic cycle influence the ecological stoichiometry of nutrients in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. His educational background spans a biology undergraduate degree (Minnesota State U., Mankato), hydrology M.S. degree (U. of Nevada, Reno), and a Ph.D. in Water Resources Science (U. of Minnesota).

Mark is currently a post-doc working on a hydrologic synthesis project supported by NSF and the Consortium of Universities Allied in the Hydrologic Sciences, Inc. (CUAHSI) and hosted at the University of New Hampshire. We are addressing human-induced changes of the hydrologic cycle in the Northeast U.S. over the period 1600 to 2100, which we term "the 500-year challenge". This 500-year challenge will be addressed using regional Earth system models, large basin watershed models, small-scale virtual watersheds, and hydro-system indicators. As synthesis, this project will rely solely on existing information and well-established data sets. NARCCAP will likely be a source of information that will be incorporated into our hydrologic synthesis project. More specifically, we see NARCCAP as a source of information to run future scenarios for the Northeast U.S. with our Earth system and large basin models.

Beyond our synthesis project, other members of the Water Systems Analysis group are active in modeling the hydrology and nitrogen biogeochemistry in basin of the Northeast U.S. NARCCAP products will be central in simulating future changes to the hydrology and nitrogen biogeochemistry of the New England region.

Jonathan Hanes

email: jmhanes@uwm.edu

Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Research

My main research goal is to assess the potential effects of climate change on forest phenology during the spring and early summer. I plan on implementing the climate data from the GCM runs into a canopy development model to examine the potential effects of climate change on canopy development. The results from this project will contribute to our understanding of how climate change may affect forest canopy development under a variety of climate scenarios.

Adel Hanna

email: ahanna@unc.edu

Director, Center for Environmental Modeling for Policy Development
Institute for the Environment
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-6116

Research

Title: Effects of Climate Change on Human Health: Current and Future Impacts

Description: In this project we examine how climatic variations and the corresponding air quality conditions may aggravate heat- and cold-related morbidity among adults and vulnerable populations: in particular, the poor, the aging and children. We will demonstrate our analysis in the state of North Carolina. North Carolina displays substantial variability in weather (mountains to seaboard), population density (rural versus urban/suburban), and regional patterns of land use (urban/suburban versus forest versus agricultural).

Objectives/Hypothesis: The overall goal of the proposed research project is to define more precisely the interrelationships among (a) changes in climate and meteorological conditions, (b) air pollution, and (c) heat- and cold-related morbidity severe enough to warrant clinical contact. A secondary goal is to evaluate heat-related morbidity in a vulnerable population: children and adults under economic disadvantage. We propose a novel approach that views climate trends and the associated weather in terms of eight identified air-mass/weather types. We hypothesize that such air masses and the corresponding air quality conditions will have different health impacts on humans, which can be quantified based on statistical analyses of the correlates among the meteorological, climate, air quality, and health data.

Approach: Our work will consist of the following steps: (1) Characterize weather patterns and circulation types over the state of North Carolina; (2) examine temporal and regional variability in meteorological and climatological patterns of the state of North Carolina to identify abnorm

Data Needed: Hourly surface meteorological data (temperature, winds, pressure, etc.) for one or two future years (year 2040 or after)

Expected Results: We anticipate that the characteristics of the climate . air pollution relationship across North Carolina over time will be generalizable throughout the US, and that our proposed study will yield important insights regarding the impact of climate change and air pollution on heat- and cold-related morbidity, thus advancing our knowledge of the health effects of climate change and their predictability. Findings on applying environmental and climate data to decrease heat- and cold-related morbidity could result in a substantial public health impact, not just in North Carolina but throughout the United States.

James Hocker

email: jhocker@ou.edu
website: http://www.southernclimate.org

James Hocker is the University of Oklahoma (OU) program manager for the Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program (SCIPP) which is part of NOAA's RISA program. Along with managing SCIPP, James' work focuses on identifying the climate service and information needs of decision-makers across the southern U.S. (Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas) as they pertain to climate hazard and adaptation planning. His research interests focus on applied climatological research and extreme event climatologies with a particular emphasis on geographic information systems. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in meteorology from the University of Oklahoma.

Research

The Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program (SCIPP) has several research projects and outreach activities that could benefit from the use of NARCCAP data. The following are several such applications:

• To incorporate NARCCAP data into a GIS-based climate hazards planning tool currently under development. The hazard-planning tool will contain both historical climate hazard data as well as future climate projections which will be used by decision makers for hazard mitigation and adaptation planning purposes.
• To help southern U.S. decision-makers be better prepared for climate change, especially in the areas of water resource management, coastal management, and adaptation planning. This would be accomplished by providing NARCCAP data through the SCIPP website with associated explanations regarding model uncertainty, limitations of climate models, and how to understand and interpret the information.
• To provide NARCCAP data and imagery as part of SCIPP's public outreach and education activities.

Additional research and application projects ideas are being developed, many of which could make use of NARCCAP data.

John Horel

email: john.horel@utah.edu

Dept of Meteorology
University of Utah

Research

We're interested in examining the downscaled present and future climate in the intermountain region of the West. After local and regional validation of the NARCCAP model simulations for the present climate, much of the work would be related to examining relationships between winter precipitation in the mountains and synoptic-scale features in the models. Are there trends in the number of storms, intensity, etc., during the winter season? Of particular interest will be to examine how changes in free-tropospheric temperature may related to changes in the rain-snow line.

Radley Horton

email: radley.m.horton@gmail.com

Radley Horton is an Associate Research Scientist at the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University, working with Cynthia Rosenzweig's Climate Impacts group. He conducted his graduate work with David Rind at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University in New York. His Ph.D. research focused on regional impacts of climate variability and climate change as simulated by Global Climate Models. He has published on topics including polar climate, high-latitude climate variability and change, sea level rise, and adaptation to climate change. He is involved in current (and recent projects) in the New York Region examining impacts of climate change on the water system, transit systems, and Long Island coastal ecosystems. Additional projects include climate change impacts on agriculture in the Southeastern United States and Central America, alternative projections of 21st century sea level rise, and impacts of changing lower boundary conditions on Arctic meteorology. At the Center for Climate Systems Research, he helps conduct regional climate change scenario assessments for stakeholders around the globe.

Research

The Climate Impacts Group at NASA GISS is interested in NARCCAP output for several potential applications:

1. Drive further downscaling with the WRF-ARW model to the metropolitan level
2. Directly drive impact assessment models (of agriculture, energy, health, municipal applications, and/or water resource management)
3. Examine the sensitivity of large-scale circulation patterns to climate scenarios
4. Determine the statistics of extreme events in participating models
5. Evaluate the ensemble and member statistics to determine whether NARCCAP-like projects are justified for climate impact assessments in other regions of the world.

Of primary initial interest is the downscaled 20th Century climate scenario, followed by the A1B scenarios in the mid 21st Century.

Timothy Howard

email: thoward@tnc.org

I work as part of a team within the New York Natural Heritage Program which is a collaboration between the NY Department of Environmental Conservation and The Nature Conservancy. I am a plant ecologist by training and am now working in conservation biology and landscape ecology. We have institutional collaborations with local universities and other NGO and governmental organizations.

Research
We are looking for current and future climate data to help inform our habitat distribution modeling efforts. In particular, we are actively engaged in a project funded by State Wildlife Grants with match funding from the Hudson River Estuary Program and Cornell University, seeking to determine the current and potential future habitat connectivity for 25 Species of Greatest Conservation Need in the Hudson Valley. Using advanced modeling techniques in a Geographic Information System, we will use climatic, geological, and land cover data to determine how connected the landscape is for these 25 species, under current climatic conditions and with potential future changes in climate. Results from this project will be used to determine priority locations for conservation in the Hudson Valley.

Ryan Hruska

email: Ryan.Hruska@inl.gov

Idaho National Laboratory

Research

I am interested in using RCM runs to drive landscape dynamics models in order to evaluate the impact of potential land management policies. Vegetation structure and composition influence the local water cycle through evapotranspiration and interception. Alternative management policies have a direct impact on this process, and in order to evaluate the magnitude of these impacts, changing climate must also be evaluated. We intended to use the RCM outputs provided by NARCCAP to drive the VDDT-TELSA (Vegetation Dynamics Development Tool/Tool for Exploratory Landscape Scenario Analyses) model to address this. In addition, we are considering using the ouputs of this analysis to drive a distributed regional hydrologic model such as RHESSys (Regional Hydro-Ecologic Simulation System Model.

Syewoon Hwang

email: aceace111@ufl.edu

I am a Ph.D. student in Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Florida with a dissertation project directed by Dr. Wendy Graham (Director of UF Water Institute) on the research project for improving water management system. my background is hydrology, and the research focuses on climate and hydrologic modeling for assessing the impacts of climate change on hydrologic responses in west central Florida.

Research

I am interested in the temporal and spatial variability of historical precipitation in the Tampa Bay region and evaluation of the ability of the mesoscale downscaling model (MM5), developed by Penn State University (PSU) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), to reproduce this variability. The long term goal of this effort is to evaluate the utility of using MM5 to downscale GCM forecasts and climate change scenarios for improving water management decisions in the Tampa Bay region.

David Inouye

email: inouye@umd.edu

Dr. David W. Inouye, Professor
Dept. of Biology
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-4415

Research

Main research goals - My work has focused on a long-term study of variation in the phenology and abundance of flowering by about 100 species of wildflowers. I have a 35-year record for these variables from permanent plots at RMBL and am interested in forecasting how they may change in the future. This project is currently supported by funding from NSF. Most of the variation in flowering phenology is explained by variation in snowmelt dates, and for quite a few species there is also a correlation between winter precipitation and abundance of flowering.

Research methods - See this paper for an example of how I have used data on snowpack to explain variation in flowering phenology and abundance: Inouye, D. W. 2008. Effects of climate change on phenology, frost damage, and floral abundance of montane wildflowers. Ecology 89(2): 353-362.

Research plan - The same paper gives an example of how I use environmental data to explain variation in flowering phenology and abundance.

What data are needed - I would be interested in projections of future trends in precipitation (especially as snowfall) and temperature (as it affects snowmelt) for the area around the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (38°57′N, 106°59′W).

Anticipated findings or significance of work - To the degree that the future of snowpack and snowmelt can be predicted, I can predict the environmental consequences for flowering by wildflowers, and hence predict how their population biology may be affected.

Michelle Irizarry

email: mirizar@sfwmd.gov

Research

Recent climate change projections by the IPCC (2007) and numerous projections of Sea Level Rise have the potential to cause significant impacts on water resources management and on existing and future ecosystem restoration projects in south Florida.

The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) includes projections of climate change based on General Circulation Model (GCM) simulation results for a series of green-house gas emission scenarios. Volume II of the AR4 report discusses potential impacts of climate change, adaptation measures, and vulnerability of coastal systems and low-lying areas. However, these assessments are limited to potential regional scale impacts and are not detailed nor certain enough to provide meaningful guidance for water resources management and planning at local scales.

Statistical and dynamic downscaling methods may provide additional value at local scales which are relevant to water resource managers. Our modeling group is interested in obtaining downscaled predictions of climate change which could be used to drive our hydrologic models. The purpose is to assess potential impacts of climate change on flood control and water supply functions of water resources management, and on existing and future ecosystem restoration projects in south Florida. The plan is to first validate output from each RCM/GCM NARCCAP simulation and to use those results in weighing their future predictions of climate change for the region of south Florida.

Lucinda Johnson

email: ljohnson@d.umn.edu

I am an aquatic and landscape ecologist; my research focuses on quantifying linkages and feedbacks between the landscape and aquatic ecosystems at scales ranging from local to regions. We are interested in the effects of multiple stressors on aquatic ecosystems ad biota; climate change is one of the stressors we are addressing.

Research

I lead a group of university and state agency researchers who have assembled historic data encompassing lake and stream water quantity and quality parameters along with biological (primarily fisheries) data. We are currently evaluating trends with respect to ice out dates and past climate. We are currently engaged in data analysis using a variety of statistical techniques. Models quantifying evaporation have been developed; in conjunction with precipitation data we have quantified trends in lake water availability. Trends in surface water temperatures have been indentified; we are currently examining these data with respect to lake morphometry and landscape context using a variety of regression and multivariate techniques. Trends in fish community assemblages and walleye spawning dataes have been examined; spawning dates are highly correlated with ice out dates. A series of tools have been developed to summarize climate trends; lake water quality and temperature trends can be summarized and displayed. A synthesis manuscript is in preparation.

Our next goal is to predict changes in lake water level, temperature, water quality, and fish assemblages from downscaled climate data. Our aim is inform management and policy with respect to adaptation strategies needed to best manage Great Lake and regional aquatic resources.

Sho Kawazoe

email: shomtm62@iastate.edu

I am a first year graduate student, attending Iowa State University. Currently, I am working under the supervision of Dr William Gutowski. I graduated from Iowa State University with the B.S in Meteorology and Environmental Studies in May 2009.

Research

My current research involves using archived NARCCAP data during the time frame of 1979 to 1999, and determine what the synoptic, 500mb flow and anomalies show during these events. Currently, the research determines extreme events as precipitation in the top 10% of the data, and focuses on the cold half of the year (October-March), in the Greater Upper Mississippi and Coastal California region. Further research planned include analyzing the bottom 10% of events, expanding regions outside of the two analyzed, and looking the daily extreme data, using the 3-hourly data.

Yuri Kim

email: yuri513@email.unc.edu

I am a Ph.D student in Geography department of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I am interested in hydrology and hydrometeorology.

Research

I want to use NARCCAP data for forecasting future water use availability. I am using hydrologic model to estimate water discharge in terms of the changing environment--landuse/landcover change and climate change. So I need simulated future climate data (precipitation, Tmax, Tmin, radiation, etc.) for my research.

Andrei Kirilenko

email: andrei.kirilenko@und.edu

Associate Professor
Department of Earth Systems Science and Policy
University of North Dakota
Grand Forks, ND 58202-9011
Phone: 701-777-6761
Fax: 701-777-2940

I am primarily interested in development and application of integrated models to assess the impacts of climate change on environment. My ongoing and recently completed research projects include the assessments of climate change impact on distribution of insect pollinators in North America, land use and climate change impact on the hydrology of a terminal lake in North Dakota, climate change impact on water security of the Aral Basin countries, climate change impact on food security of Russia, forest vegetation zone shifts, and others. My research interests also include land use change in relation to urban sprawl, model-data fusion, model ensembles, and model-GIS integration.

Research

The data will be used in two studies of climate change impacts on the Upper Great Plains. In the first project, we will be studying the impact of climate change on hydrology of two watersheds in North Dakota: Devil's Lake and Little Missouri River. The climatic data series will be used as an input to the Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC-HMS) for the rainfall-runoff model and the Reservoir System Simulation model (HEC-ResSim) for reservoir modeling and flow routing. For the second project, we will evaluate climate change impact on agricultural production in North Dakota. Temperature and precipitation data series will be used together with DSSAT-CERES model of wheat production.

Daniel Kirk-Davidoff

email: dankd@atmos.umd.edu
website: http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~dankd

Daniel Kirk-Davidoff is a climate dynamicist with interests in paleoclimate modeling, wind power-climate interactions, satellite climate monitoring, the use of satellite data to improve climate models. He uses a range of climate models, from simple two-dimensional models to coupled climate models, to explore the dynamical basis for such fundamental aspects of climate as the pole-to-equator temperature difference, and the mean tropopause height, to understand the interaction of surface topography and roughness with climate, and to generate and test hypotheses about the connections and feedbacks among tropospheric dynamics, stratospheric overturning, the stratospheric water vapor budget and polar stratospheric clouds. In addition, he design tests of global climate models' fidelity to data that are directly relevant to the models' predictions of the sensitivity of the earth's climate to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, and works to develop optimal observing strategies for climate monitoring satellites.

Research

My student Daniel Barrie and I are carrying out a DOE-sponsored research effort to investigate the impact of anthropogenic climate change on the future wind power resource. We have analyzed the IPCC AR4 model runs. Our results to date indicate a wide range of predicted change in the wind power resource, with predictions ranging from modest decreases to increases of 20% over high-wind regions of the United States. Adding the high resolution NARCCAP data to our analysis would enhance our ability to calibrate the present climate wind resource by comparison with SeaWinds QuickScat winds, and would also allow better discussion of the relation of future forced changes to topography and mean climate.

Sanjiv Kumar

email: kumar34@purdue.edu

I am a PhD student at School of Civil Engineering, Purdue University. My research interests include: water resource scenarios (quantity and quality) in future climate change conditions, land surface and atmospheric interaction, feedback mechanism for precipitation, downscaling of climate model outputs for hydrologic modeling applications.

Research

Main research goals: Making contributions towards better understanding of future water resource scenarios at the regional level.

Research methods and plan:

1. Understanding the recent past (last 500 years), how humans have interfered with regional hydrologic cycle including precipitation, temperature, land use and land cover change.
2. Using global and regional climate models to conduct sensitivity experiments for the conditions.
3. Linking/validating model output with the available historical records, including socio-economic data.
4. Modeling for future water demand and water quality at the regional scale using downscaled climate model outputs to drive hydrologic models and studying the subsequent effect on water quality.

Anticipated findings or significance of this work:

1. Better understanding of human interference in the hydrologic cycle
2. Water resource scenarios for the future scenarios in different regions of the world.

Katie Lavigne

email: klavig2@lsu.edu

I am from New Orleans, LA. I recieved my undergraduate degree in Geography from Louisiana State University in May 2009. I am continuing on for my master's degree at LSU in physical geography with a focus in climate.

Research

I plan to do a future scenario water budget analysis for river systems in South Louisiana. I will use the output of climate change from NARCCAP as my input for the water budget model to predict future water budget changes.

Kaleen Lawsure

email: klawsure@odu.edi

Project Scientist
Virginia Modeling, Analysis & Simulation Center
1030 University Blvd.
Suffolk, VA 23435

Research

The goal of our proposed research is to develop an improved overarching computer model that will facilitate the prediction of health impacts of climate change at local, regional, and national levels. This model will assist in the evaluation of proposed policy changes and adaptation efforts that encompass biological, social, and political (policy-making) efforts. To these ends our research has the following objectives:

1. Review the existing integrated assessment frameworks and improve upon these frameworks as necessary to develop an all encompassing conceptual model that will facilitate the achievement of the above goals.
2. Implement the improved integrated assessment framework in a system dynamics model that will provide not only the causal connections among the various factors but also the computational backbone to implement the model in a fully functional simulation.
3. Assess the qualitative factors that must be included in the above model since models that include political and social aspects often do not have hard quantitative data. The investigators have developed a methodology for measuring, mapping, and combining qualitative and quantitative data into models that provide accurate predictive capability.
4. Identify one or more use cases (real-world examples) and perform Monte Carlo simulation analysis to assess model validity. This will also include sensitivity analysis to determine key factors influencing model outcome and allow for inclusion of variables with various degrees of uncertainty in a scientific manner.
5. Enlist the aid of our research advisors and other subject matter experts to help judge the overall validity, usefulness, and predictive accuracy to prescribe adaptation, institutional and/or policy implementation to address global health issues and needs.

At a minimum our model will contain sub-models addressing disease biology, ecological constructs, and social behavior. We will identify a broad range of factors in each sub-model that will allow the entire system to scale from the local to the national level. Those factors not important at a specific level may be left out of a specific analysis. This concept will allow for the incorporation of various diseases or families of diseases that one may want to analyze for policy and adaptation scenarios.

A system dynamics modeling approach is most appropriate for this effort. System dynamics modeling allows for a concise mapping of factors that influence system behavior and the causal relationships that exist among those factors. This modeling paradigm also affords researchers and model users a way to visualize very complex systems in a straight forward manner. This aids in a better understanding of the system through both a holistic view of the system and the emergence of behaviors not intuitively obvious because of the limits of human cognition. The three sub-models indentified above (disease biology, ecological constructs, and social behavior) are clearly systems in themselves. Taking a system of systems approach to analyzing the relationships that exist among them will clearly enhance the understanding of the overall behavior of this very complex association.

A very important aspect of our proposal is the link between this model and the ability to evaluate other research efforts addressing specific policy and adaptation schemes. This model will afford the research community a means to test out in a scientific manner the results of their research. Modeling and simulation allows for manipulation of aspects of the real-world that cannot readily be changed. The model will also identify areas where insufficient data is available that can help set a future research agenda for health agencies around the world.

Brian Lazar

email: blazar@stratusconsulting.com
website: http://www.stratusconsulting.com

Brian Lazar is a senior scientist with Stratus Consulting and specializes in the characterization and mechanics of integrated hydrologic systems, using analytical techniques from engineering, physics, and hydrology. At Stratus Consulting, Mr. Lazar performs snowpack and hydrologic modeling and analysis, climate change impact assessments, and data research and analysis; and provides scientific litigation support. His work is concentrated in the areas of surface and groundwater hydrology, snowpack modeling, glaciology, and contaminant fate and transport. Mr. Lazar hold an MS in environmental/water resource engineering and a BS in environmental science, both from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Research

We intend to use the NARCCAP data sets for climate change impacts analyses. We are typically using climate change projections for a region (e.g. coterminous U.S.) or a locale (e.g. Park City) and then answering questions like, "If these projections come to fruition, what would happen to...." My focus area looks at potential changes to snowpack, glaciers, and hydrologic systems. Others here at Stratus look at potential changes to ecological, biological, and even economic systems.

Some examples of these projects include:

• impacts to snowpack for ski areas in the 21st century, and what this may mean for ski are operations and dependent economies
• impacts to cold water fish species in the coterminous U.S.
• implications for flood infrastructure and resiliency to extreme events in the U.S.
• potential impacts for snowmelt runoff and timing in snowmelt driven water management districts

Methodology generally looks at a wide range of climate projections, considering a suite of GCMs and a range of SRES emissions scenarios in an effort to bracket future potential climatic outcomes. In order to obtain higher resolution projections, we use RCMs and statistical downscaling methods.

Jean Lerner

email: jal136@columbia.edu

Jean Lerner is a scientific programmer working with Radley Horton, Alex Ruane, and Cynthia Rosenzweig at Columbia University and NASA/GISS.

Research

The Climate Impacts Group at NASA GISS is interested in NARCCAP output for several potential applications:

1. Drive further downscaling with the WRF-ARW model to the metropolitan level
2. Directly drive impact assessment models (of agriculture, energy, health, municipal applications, and/or water resource management)
3. Examine the sensitivity of large-scale circulation patterns to climate scenarios
4. Determine the statistics of extreme events in participating models
5. Evaluate the ensemble and member statistics to determine whether NARCCAP-like projects are justified for climate impact assessments in other regions of the world.

Yinpeng Li

email: yinpengl@waikato.ac.nz

The International Global Change Institute, The University of Waikato, New Zealand.

Research interests: Climate change impact integrated assessment modelling, risk assessment; regional climate change projections.

Research

The aims of using NARCCAP data:

1. Comparing the extreme precipitation simulations of RCMs and GCMs under climate change scenarios
2. Comparing the performance of downscaling methods in regional and local precipitation projection
3. Exploring the applicability of pattern scaling approach by using RCM data.

This reseach will be helpful for developing more reliable regional climate change projections.

Ronald Lowther

email: ronald.lowther@ngc.com

Northrop Grumman Corporation

Dr. Ron Lowther is an accomplished executive, manager, and scientist leading highly successful organizations with a strong portfolio of success. He has over 25 years in facets of industry, defense, and academics with expertise in atmospheric science, environmental engineering, climate services, risk management, and academic administration with supervisory and staffing oversight.

Currently, an Environmental Advanced Systems Manager for Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, Dr. Lowther manages several programs and is responsible for providing overall planning and long-term positioning of the company's global environmental and climate initiatives.

Before coming to Northrop Grumman in 2008, Dr. Lowther was the Director of Air and Space Science for the Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA). Technically, he propelled the first fine-scale weather prediction model in over a decade to operational status. Lowther coordinated 15-year modeling plans with milestones and decision points which addressed terrestrial, near space, and space weather areas in the near-, mid-, and long-term periods providing clear 4-D weather visions and roadmaps for the Department of Defense and its research partners. In addition, he led global online training of weather risk management tools to allow the exploitation and use of stochastic predictions.

From 2000-2005, Dr. Lowther was Director of Outreach Programs at the Air Force Institute of Technology, as well as, Deputy Department Head for the multi-disciplinary Engineering Physics Department. As Director of Outreach Programs for the Institute, Dr. Lowther established graduate distance learning programs in Systems Engineering at DOD installations and cooperative transfer agreements with nearby large universities.

Prior to 2000, Dr. Lowther was Chief Scientist for the Air Force Climatology Center located in the Federal Climate Complex in Asheville, NC. Previous to that he held the position of Department of Defense Climatologist in Washington D.C.

Dr. Lowther has demonstrated leadership in implementing cooperative agreements among Federal agencies and universities with a strong record of commitment to interdisciplinary and diverse programs: atmospheric science, data exploitation, environmental and systems engineering, climate modeling, space weather, and remote sensing. He is reputable for elevating organizations to top-performing and revenue-generating entities with multiple prestigious career awards.

Research

My research focuses on functional areas that provide the research, analysis, science, and modeling capability to deliver forecasts and other high fidelity, high resolution output from global climate model predictions downscaled for regional and local use. These functional areas analyze and model climate variability and impacts occurring on the regional levels, and provide high-resolution model predictions. The high-resolution products are also validated using historical observations and re-analysis data. The increased spatial resolution is examined for its support of regional needs in areas requiring decisions and solutions by local policy and decision makers. My work also looks at adapting, developing, and validating decision support models and products for regions. The computational tools required to support these analyses and modeling functions are coordinated with community members to ensure repeatable results and conformity to standards and interfaces.

Eric Lu

email: elu@iastate.edu
website: http://climate.agron.iastate.edu/ResearchTeam/LuEric.html

I am a research associate at the Agronomy Department of Iowa State University. My research interests include understanding the atmospheric and land processes involved in the relationships among temperature, water vapor, precipitation, streamflow and other hydrological components.

Research

The NARCCAP data I will use is for the assessment of the hydrological impact of the climate change in the Upper Mississippi River Basin with the hydrological model SWAT. The purpose of this work is to make clear whether the meteorological data provided by the different global models downscaled by the different regional models can lead to satisfied simulation of the hydrological cycle, how the hydrological cycle will change with the warming climate, and how to understand the contributions of temperature and precipitation to the interannual variability and long-term change of the hydrological cycle.

Ross MacKay

email: ross.mackay@ec.gc.ca
website: http://www.ec.gc.ca/INRE-NWRI

Research

Our main research goal is comparing NARCCAP regional data with station data, reanalysis results, gridded observed datasets and future climate scenarios for hydrologic studies.

Our plan is to work with the data (RCM, gridded observed, station data) over the Lake Winnipeg Drainage Basin to see how well the RCMs replicate recent climate (1971-2000) at various spatial and temporal scales with respect to temperature, precipitation, and possibly some circulation variables using correlations, means, extremes, and rmse.

Victor Magaña

email: victormr@servidor.unam.mx

National Autonomous University of Mexico
Mexico City 04510
victormr@servidor.unam.mx

Ph.D from the University of California Los Angeles

Currently at the National Autonomoius University of Mexico

Research

Man interests on dynamics of climate in the Mexico, Central America and Caribbean region, and the use of climate information to reduce vulnerability on various socioeconomic sectors, including adaptation to climate change.

As part of the official plans of the Mexican government to respond to the challenge on Climate Change, there is a need to formulate adaptation plans at the state level. This requires downscaling climate change scenarios to the state level, and at times at the basin level, since the water sector is one of those considered as a priority in the adaptation process.

Members of the Tropical Meteorology group at the National University of Mexico have explored various venues on how to downscale GCM output and on how to consider the climate statistics to properly manage risk of climate change at the regional level. The most important lines of research include the use of statistical tools to downscale GCM climate change scenarios used for the IPCC AR4. There are two basic developments: 1) the statistical downscaling model, known as SDSM, to construct local climate change scenarios, and 2) the use of the Climate Predictability Tool (CPT) developed at the IRI to downscale monthly conditions using GCM output. Results from the CPT have been compared with output from mesoscale models as PRECIS from the Hadley Center and the Earth Simulator from the Meteorological Research Institute for the domain of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.

At present, we are coupling a stochastic weather generator to explore changes in extreme events under climate change and compare with observational analyses of trends in severe storms and drought for the last one hundred years in Mexico.

Kelly Mahoney

email: kelly.mahoney@noaa.gov

I am a UCAR postdoctoral fellow through the PACE (Postdocs Applying Climate Expertise) program. I am working with NOAA and the US Bureau of Reclamation to examine extreme precipitation events in the western US.

Research

To examine the potential for changes in warm season extreme precipitation events across the western US in future climates, I plan to use the WRF model to conduct higher-resolution simulations of a small set of extreme events. To do so, I would like to utilize the NARCAAP dataset as both a resource to assess future scenario possibilities, as well as potential initial conditions for future simulations.

Samantha Mann

email: samij07@hotmail.com

GIS Contractor
Northern Research Station
Grand Rapids, MN

Research

Research Goals: Determine the effects of climate change on forest productivity and carbon cycling in Northeastern US

Methods: Combine knowledge of current forest types and distribution, geographic variables and future climate scenarios to forecast potential changes in forest ecosystem health and carbon storage capacity

Research Plan:

1. map current distribution of forest types using remotely sensed imagery
2. estimate and validate current productivity from FIA data
3. incorporate predicted climate variables to simulate future productivity
4. apply insight gained from research to forest management plans and distribute research process/findings to promote environmental awareness

Data needed: Predicted future climate conditions for Northern Great Lakes region

Anticipated findings / significance: This research will address the potential impacts of climate change on the distribution, health and carbon storage capacity of Lake States forests and disperse the research process and findings to generate increased ecological understanding via collaboration with regional school programs.

Patrick Marsh

email: patrick.marsh@ou.edu

Research
A significant question of climate change predictions is what will happen to severe convective weather. While the resolution of GCMs (in particular, the CCSM) and NARCCAP is greater than the resolution necessary to explicitly resolve convection, it should be high enough to resolve the mesoscale environments typically associated with severe convective weather. Previous studies have shown that regions with high CAPE and high 0-6 kilometer shear are favorable for the development of severe convective weather. I propose to build climatologies of parameters that have been shown sufficient for the development of severe convection. These parameters include, but are not limited to, CAPE, 0-6 kilometer shear, the product of CAPE and 0-6 kilometer shear, lapse rates, and low-level moisture content. This will further work done by Brooks et al. involving the NCEP / NCAR Global Reanalysis and work done by Marsh et al. involving the CCSM3. Results will allow for more concrete statements regarding the effect climate change will have on the frequency and distribution of severe convective weather.

Gary McManus

email: gmcmanus@ou.edu
website: http://climate.mesonet.org

I am the Associate State Climatologist of Oklahoma and I work at the state climate office, the Oklahoma Climatological Survey. We are housed on the University of Oklahoma Campus in the National Weather Center. My interests include studying the climate variability of the Southern Plains, and the climate change aspects of that variability.

Research

I would like to use the NARCCAP simulations to better identify possible impacts for the state of Oklahoma, in accordance with our past work. That past work includes the formulation and production of an Oklahoma Climatological Survey statement on climate change.

The original plan in producing that document was to branch out and produce further documents concentrating on various facets of society and industry, such as water use, energy, agriculture and public health. Those documents would be produced in collaboration with state experts in those particular fields. The decision was made to wait until the science of regional climate projections matured and improved. NARCCAP certainly appears to be a step in that direction and would be a key part as the Oklahoma Climatological Survey moved ahead in legislatively-mandated efforts to provide the state's citizens and decision-makers with pertinent and timely information related to climate.

At the onset, and at the very least, the graphical presentations of the simulations could be used in the public speaking events we participate in on the subject of climate change. Following that, the output from NARCCAP would be used to produce Oklahoma scenarios for future impact studies.

Seung-Ki Min

email: seung-ki.min@ec.gc.ca

Research Scientist
Climate Research Division
Environment Canada
4905 Dufferin St., Toronto ON M3H 5T4 Canada
Phone 416-739-5788, Fax 416-739-5700

Research

I'm interested in evaluating and combining multi-RCM simulations for the past and future climate changes. Probabilistic approach will be employed to address large uncertainties arising from finer local scales, and relative contributions of inter-model difference and internal climate variability will be explored in terms of changes in both climatology and variability of various climate variables including temperature and precipitation.

Arthur Mizzi

email: amizzi@walshenv.com

Research

Main research goals: NARCCAP data, especially that data pertaining to wind and planetary boundary layer forecasts and climatologies, will be compared with the output of RCM solutions driven by IPCC scenario GCM results.

Research methods and plan: Forced by IPCC GCM results, RCM experiments will be conducted, the output of which will be compared to NARCCAP datasets. Particular attention will be paid to boundary layer and wind variables.

What data are needed: We are especially interested in boundary layer and wind data.

Anticipated findings or significance of work: We anticipate this cross comparison will facilitate assessment of our simulations, and so our assessment of forecasts and climatologies of boundary layer features and wind into this century.

Alvaro Montenegro

email: alvaro@uvic.ca
website: http://climate.uvic.ca/people/alvaro/

I'm a postdoc fellow working at the University of Victoria Climate Modelling group in BC, Canada. Most of my work so far has been based on the UVic ESCM EMIC but I have also done some data based climate change impact analysis for the BC forestry sector.

Research

I plan to use the NARCCAP data on climate impact analysis for BC's Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. The Ministry is interested in understanding the impact of future climate change on their building and maintenance protocols.

This project is at its incipient stages and much is yet to be defined. At this time the list of pertinent parameters include mid and end of 21st century projections of parameters like rainfall intensity/duration, freeze/thaw cycles, temperature ranges, wind speeds and total snow precipitation. The spatial scale of interest is ~50km but the particular areas of interest are still to be decided.

Martin Jose Montero-Martinez

email: mmontero@tlaloc.imta.mx

Profession: Atmospheric Physicist
Date and Place of Birth: January 30, 1968. Mexico City.
Working at IMTA since: February 2000
Education: BS in Physics (1989), Autonomous University of Puebla (Mexico)
MS in Geophysics (1993), National Autonomous University of Mexico
PhD in Atmospheric Sciences (1999), University of Arizona (USA)
Postdoc (1999-2000, 1 Yr) at University of Dalhousie (Canada)

Detailed Tasks Assigned:

To perform research in the fields of aerosols (biomass burning), global climate change, atmospheric numerical modeling, and adaptation measurements to climate change.

Relevant projects:

• 2007 Climate impact effects and potential impacts on water resources in Mexico.
  Funded by IMTA 2007. Responsible of providing IPCC (GCMs) analyzed data.
• 2007 Climate trends of extreme hydrometeorological phenomena in Mexico during the last 40 years.
  Funded by CONACYT-CONAGUA 2007-2010. Principal Investigator.
• 2006 Implementation of the atmospheric model CAM3 in the USMN cluster.
  Funded by CONAGUA 2005-06. Principal investigator.
• 2005 Climate change studies in the precipitation features due to land cover and use change in northwestern Mexico.
  Funded by IMTA 2005. Principal investigator.
• 2004 PNUD/INE/CCA/IMTA: Promotion of capacities for stage 2 of climate change adaptation in Central America, Mexico and Cuba
  Funded by GEF 2004-2006. Responsible for the water sector in the Mexican part.
• 2002 CONACYT/IMTA J38238-T: Monitoring biomass burning aerosols in Southeast Mexico to characterize their optical and radiative properties and determine their regional climate impacts
  Funded by CONACYT 2002-2004. Principal Investigator (3 colaborators + 5 students)
• 2001 CONACYT/IMTA I35630-T: Estimate of the climate impact in Mexico due to the global biomass burning aerosols by using the model NCAR-CCM3
  Funded by CONACYT 2001. Principal Investigator (individual).

Research

Jose Luis Perez and myself currently are working in a project for the Mexican Meteorological Service in which we will need to use dynamical downscaling to regionalize scenarios data from the NCAR-CCSM model for all of Mexico. Thus, our interest in your data is based in which you cover some part of Mexico using different coupled GCMs regionalized with different regional models. Thus, one of our key questions is to know what kind of possibility would be that you could cover all of Mexico in NARCCAP future work. Other question is to know more about the downscaling process that you use, and based on that, to know once and for all if we are working in the right direction.

Philip Morefield

email: morefield.philip@epa.gov

EPA - Global Change Research Program

Research

Working with Chris Weaver to use NARCCAP data for water quality impacts work.

Linda Mortsch

email: ldmortsc@fesmail.uwaterloo.ca

Senior Impacts and Adaptation Researcher
Adaptation and Impacts Research Division
Atmospheric Science and Technology Directorate,
Environment Canada
c/o Faculty of Environmental Studies,
University of Waterloo
200 University Ave W.,
Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 3G1
Phone: 519-888-4567 ext 35495
Fax: 519-746-2031
linda.mortsch@ec.gc.ca

AFFILIATIONS:

Adjunct, Geography Department, Faculty of Environmental Studies, University of Waterloo

Research

1. Climate change vulnerability, impacts and adaptation assessment in water resources (quantity and quality), and inland coastal wetland ecosystems
   • development of climate change scenarios for water resources planning and management
     • working with water resource practitioners in developing climate change scenarios for incorporation into strategic watershed planning (e.g., source water protection) and flood plain management and emergency preparedness
     • climate change scenarios applied in impact assessments for the Great Lakes basin have used GCM output; how can dynamical downscaling (regional climate model) results be applied in this context; how can we use multi-ensemble runs; how do the RCMs "behave" over the Great Lakes Basin
   • development of daily extreme precipitation scenarios for erosion, water quality and flooding impact and risk assessments
2. Climate change adaptation in community design and urban planning
   • adaptation to climate change would require significant changes to design standards for streets, buildings, open spaces, and infrastructure systems. Changes would likely be required at the scale of the region, the city, the district, and the site.
     • how can climate change scenarios be developed to understand impacts of a changing climate and to deveop

APPLICATIONS OF NARCCAP DATA:

1. Development of multiple, high resolution climate change scenarios for water resources and ecosystem modelling studies in selected regions in Canada
2. Development of daily precipitation time series for applications in water quality modelling (e.g., erosion), hydrologic modelling for flooding impact assessment and assessment of adaptation strategies (e.g., design floods, detention ponds)

Thomas Mote

email: tmote@uga.edu

Research
We anticipate using NARCCAP for analysis for climate change and its influence on fuel loads and fire vulnerability in the Southeastern United States. See Willis Shem's entry for more details.

Gretchen Mullendore

email: gretchen@atmos.und.edu

Gretchen Mullendore is an assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at University of North Dakota. Her research interests include: Mass transport in convection; Regional climatology; Cloud-scale dynamics. She received her Ph.D. from University of Washington in 2003, and B.S. in Geophysics from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1998.

Research

We plan to use the NARCCAP data to examine climate impacts on in the Northern Great Plains region with specific interest in changes in the synoptic regimes and hydrological cycle. We also want to use NARCCAP output to initialize higher resolution WRF runs, focusing on the North Dakota region, to investigate variability across different zones of land-use and terrain.

Evan Murdock

email: eamurdock@wisc.edu

Evan is a PhD student at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Research

Research goals: I want to determine the possible impacts of climate change on the ability of the Mississippi river to provide cooling water for thermoelectric power generation.

Methods: I will be using NARCCAP data to populate a 1-D water temperature model of the Mississippi river. The output temperature time series will then drive a compliance tool to determine the number of hours an energy producer might have to scale back their production.

The model requires streamflow, temperature, dew point, cloud cover, and windspeed data, all of which we hope to be able to use directly or derive based on NARCCAP data.

Ultimately we hope to be able to assess the impacts of climate change on thermoelectric power generation in the Upper Mississippi River Basin.

Trevor Murdock

email: tmurdock@uvic.ca

Trevor Murdock is Associate Director of the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium in Victoria, BC. For the past 12 years, he has worked on applications of climate research to assist decision-making and planning. Trevor's work has focused on climate scenarios and online mapping tools, downscaling to high resolution, analysis of historical climate data and improvement of seasonal climate predictions.

Research

Jason Neff

email: neffjc@colorado.edu
website: http://moab.colorado.edu

CV: http://moab.colorado.edu/NeffCV.html

Research

We are working with the BLM/Department of Interior in SW Colorado on a climate impacts project - the focus is beginning work on the potential impacts of climate change on public lands. Our focus will likely include forest health and wildfire but we will begin work by evaluating NARCCAP runs for the SW Colorado four corners region. We are also working closely with the NOAA - Western Water Assessment project for this work. Our BLM partners are part of the San Juan Public Lands Center.

Robert Nicholas

email: rnicholas@atmos.washington.edu

graduate student in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington

Research

In some previous work, I've explored drought recurrence and the prediction of winter-season rainfall for the Yaqui River basin of northwest Mexico. I'm interested in using NARCCAP data to re-examine this issue for projected climates of the late 21st century.

Michael Notaro

email: mnotaro@wisc.edu

Research

My use of NARCCAP will involve the following:

• Evaluate the simulations of the North American monsoons by NARCCAP.
• Drive ecosystem models for modern and future vegetation/soil/fire simulations.

Douglas Nychka

email: nychka@ucar.edu
website: http://www.image.ucar.edu/~nychka

Research

Density estimates will be applied to each grid box of daily surface precipitiation in the NCEP driven runs with an emphasis on estimating large quantiles accurately. Initially a logspline density estimate will used followed by a logspline modified to include Pareto tails. These probability densities will be smoothed and summarized over space using an EOF (or principal component) analysis. The spatial patterns of pdfs will be compared to NEXRAD daily precipitation composited over 12 years and at 20km gridded resolution.

The overall goal is to give a precise characterization as to how much information the daily precip distribution carries from the NARCCAP experiments. This work is in collaboration with Stephen Sain, IMAGe/NCAR.

Robert J. Oglesby

email: roglesby2@unl.edu

Robert Oglesby is currently (since 2006) a Professor of Climate Modeling in the Department of Geosciences and the School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Prior to that he was a Senior Research Scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center from 2001-2005, and an Assistant and Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Purdue University from 1992-2000. He obtained his PhD in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics from Yale University in 1990, working under Prof. Barry Saltzman. Robert has particular research interests in land surface-atmosphere interactions, particularly how soil moisture and snow cover may provide some predictability of precipitation on seasonal and longer time scales. He is also interested in the role of the hydrologic cycle in potential future climate change, especially at regional scales. Robert also using regional models to evaluate the potential climatic effects of land use changes, e.g., a large-scale transition from growing corn to growing switchgrass for biofuels.

Research

Increasingly, my research group has been using regional climate models. We have particular interests in the US Great Plains, Southeast, and Southwest. The models we primarily use are MM5 and WRF; our research collaborators also use the RSM. My goal for this workshop is not to come in with a specific need, but rather to gain a better understanding of the wide range of models used for NARCCAP, the datasets that have been produced, and how they may assist my group in our ongoing research projects.

Tinghai Ou

email: tinghai.ou@gu.se
website: othpzm98

I'm a PhD student in the Earth Science Center, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Research title: Variation and changing of extreme climate events in China

Research

My research mainly aims at understanding the historic variation in extreme climate events, the possible influence factors which may lead to changes in extreme events in China and the changing of extreme climate events with the changing of climate.

Research methods:

1. Correlation coefficient will be calculated to examine the relation between extreme events and circulation index
2. EOF will be used to examine the pattern of circulation
3. Weather classification will be used to examine daily circulation

Research plans:

1. Analyzing daily instrument data set, examining the characters of extreme events in China
2. Explain the variation of extreme climate events
1. Reanalysis data sets and instrument data sets will be used to build the connection between extreme climate events and circulation
2. Using model simulated 20th century data sets to examine the relationship found in previous step
3. Model simulated 21th century scenarios will be used to examine the future changing of extreme events based on the work of step 2

NARCCAP data will be used for examining the relation found in instruments data sets. And the data will be used to analyze the future change of extreme climate events. We will also use results from papers comparing Asia and North America.

Debasish Pai Mazumder

email: pai_19@yahoo.com

Postdoctoral Researcher
OURANOS / UQAM
550 Sherbrooke Street West
19th Floor, West Tower
Montréal H3A 1B9

Research interest: Assessment of the impact of climate-change on Canadian water resources using regional climate-model projection.

Research

Canada has some largest fresh water reserves in the world and different Canadian sectors rely on the different sources of water. For example, the sector with agriculture sensitive to changes in precipitation, evaporation, soil moisture and temperature while stream flows are more important for hydropower generation. Therefore, it is essential to better understand the consequences of climate change on Canadian water resources due to the close connection between climate and hydrologic cycle. In this research, impacts of climate change on Canadian water resources are investigated through systematic analysis of an ensemble of Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM) simulated hydro meteorological fields. For validation and assessment of uncertainty associated with the future projection of CRCM, large ensemble of simulation obtained from NARCCAP will be used in this research. We will compare CRCM simulations with ensemble of simulations obtained from NARCCAP to investigate the performance of CRCM to simulate hydrological parameters in compared to other regional models for current climate.

Zaitao Pan

email: panz@eas.slu.edu
website: http://www.eas.slu.edu/People/ZPan

Assistant Professor of Atmospheric Science. St. Louis University.

My research focuses on regional climate changes, mesoscale phenomena, land surface processes, and ecosystem modeling.

Research

The project is to understand and quantify how critical ecosystem structure, functioning, and climate feedbacks in agroecosystems will be affected by climate changes. Carbon dynamics and its change play key roles in maintaining the system health and sustainability under changing climate. The gridded climate change data generated by the global and regional model suite will be used to drive ecosystem models and to evaluate carbon flows among different pools in the agroecosystem.

José Luis Pérez López

email: jolperez@tlaloc.imta.mx

Jose Luis Perez Lopez is a Physicist of the Faculty (Power) of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). From 2000 he received his Master Sciences in Atmospheric Physics at the Posgrado of Sciences of the Earth of the UNAM in 2000. Currently he is a student of doctorate in Atmospheric Physics inside the Posgrado of Sciences of the Earth of the UNAM. Since 2001 he is a researcher associated in Hidrometeorología's department of the Mexican Institute of Technology of the Water (IMTA). Jose Luis' thesis works has been on the generation of scenes (stages) of climatic change of rain and temperature for Mexico SRES 92 (1997), and on the simulation of the regional climate in the center of Mexico using the model MM5 (2000). His topics of interest are to study the climatic regional variability of Mexico and the interactions between the atmosphere and the ocean as part of the processes that determine the regional climate. In 2007 initiate together with the Dr. Montero the evaluation of the scenarios of climatic regional change for Mexico applying the algorithm REA of Giorgi and L. Mearns, considering the ensamble models that they took part in 4th report of the IPCC. Jose Luis possesses skills in the processing and analysis of meteorological and climatological information, also in the experimental design of diagnosis, forecast in real time and of sensibility experiments for changes in the landuse in several Mexican regions.

Research

With the information of NARCCAP we will use them to evaluate the anticipated impacts on the sector of water resources of the north of my country. In October 2007, he was in contact with Seth McGinnis, expressed that his group of work needs to generate the regional scenarios according to NARCCAP's plan, but for the whole region of Mexico, the Caribe and Central America, he defined it as Mesoamerica's domain. For the present Dr. Montero and Jose Luis are initiating the process of obtaining the scenes (stages) A2 and A1B of climatic change for Mesoamerica's region using the models MM5/WRF to a scale of 40 Kms.

Thomas Pfaff

email: tpfaff@ithaca.edu
website: http://www.ithaca.edu/tpfaff

Research
The main research goal at this time is to use the data for better examples and exercises in statistics courses.

Vincent Poitras

email: poitras@rhea.ouranos.ca

• B.Sc. Physics, University of Montreal, 2003
• M.Sc. Physics, University of Montreal, 2006
• M.Sc. Atmospherical Sciences, University of Québec at Montreal

Research

Title: Assessment of climate-change impacts on Canadian water resources using Regional Climate Model projections

Abstract: Climate change will have significant impacts on water resources around the world due to the close connection between climate and the hydrologic cycle. Canada has some of the largest freshwater reserves in the world. The stability of these freshwater reserves to regional climate change is clearly an important concern for Canada requiring detailed and reliable information. Regional Climate Models (RCMs) with their complete closed water budget including both the atmospheric and land surface branches are ideal tools for this purpose. This proposal will analyse the impact of climate change on the annual and seasonal characteristics of hydro-meteorological variables that determine water availability, across Canada, using an ensemble of RCMs and their transient climate simulations for a range of plausible emission scenarios. To study the impact of climate change on streamflows, we propose to use a river system model, to model streamflows for current and future climate states. We also propose to assess projected changes to the frequency and magnitude of extreme hydro-meteorological events such as floods and droughts. Provision of detailed nation-wide information of climate-change impacts on water resources and estimates of future water availability, based on an ensemble of state-of-the-art RCMs will be an important deliverable of this project. These results will be communicated to the climate impacts community and made available for further study into the ecological and social consequences of these changes.

Pruek Pongprueksa

email: pruekpps@yahoo.com

Postdoctoral Associate at Cornell University (2007-2008)
Postdoctoral Researcher at Lamar University (2008-Present)

Research Interests:

• Chemical transport modeling (e.g. Ozone, PM, and mercury)
• Mesoscale weather forecast modeling
• Climate change

Research

Main Research Goals:
Quantify climate change impacts to mercury pollution and acid deposition.

Research plan:
Use IPCC scenarios as regional meteorological model input and then use derived data to simulate in chemical transport model.

Vara Prasad

email: vara@ksu.edu

I am a faculty at Kansas State University interested in (a) understanding the impacts of climate change factors on crop production; and (b) using crop simulation models to improve crop management practices for efficient use of inputs.

Contact Address:

P.V. Vara Prasad
Associate Professor - Crop Ecophysiology
Department of Agronomy
2004 Throckmorton Hall
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506

Research

Objective of research is to examine the impact of climate variability on crop production in the Ogallala Aquifer region. Crop simulation models would be applied using future GHG emission scenarios. Most assessments of impacts of climate change on agriculture have applied climate scenarios from General Circulation Model (GCM) with a coarse resolution to point-based or regional agricultural model. There is huge literature evidence that direct outputs from GCM are largely inadequate for regional scale impact analysis. Regional climate models (RCM) provide fine scale climate scenarios and is reported to respond more realistically to model simulation. In this research study we would be applying the RCM and DSSAT crop model to simulate the impact on four major crops (winter wheat, sorghum, cotton and corn) grown in Ogallala region. Further the research would look into the adaptation strategies required to handle the climate change situation by testing various agricultural management options. Finally this research would provide critical information needed to help decision/policy makers to device long-term strategies to cope climate variability and change.

Sara Pryor

email: spryor@indiana.edu
website: http://php.indiana.edu/~spryor

Research

The purpose of my research is to evaluate RCMs in terms of their simulation of historical variability and trends in near-surface winds, and projections of future wind climate. The methods include Kendalls tau statistics, bootstrapping, fitting of probability distributions (Weibull and Gumbel), and probabilistic downscaling. The output variables I am most interested in are wind component, sea level pressure fields and vorticity (derived or direct output). The research is funded by NSF.

Amy Pryse-Phillips

email: amyprysephillips@hotmail.com

2003 - B.A.Sc. University of Waterloo (Environmental Engineering)
2003 to Present - Hatch (Hydrotechnical Engineer)
2003 to Present - Part time M.Eng. studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland (Civil Engineering)

Research

The objective of my research is to estimate the effect of climate change on the hydroelectric potential of the lower Churchill River in Labrador, Canada. For my Masters thesis, I am setting up and calibrating a WATFLOOD hydrological model of several gauged sub-basins of the Lower Churchill River. The next step will be to develop some sort of climate changed inputs (likely using the delta method) which will be run through this calibrated hydrological model to obtain an estimate of the change in water availability in the basin over the next century.

There are no climate observations from within the sub-basins that I'm modeling and therefore I am interested in obtaining other climate data series such as NARCCAP to potentially use for model calibration, depending on the agreement between NARCAPP and observations at the station locations.

Jonas Roberts is also part of the research group, and he is focussing on regional climate modeling of the same basin.

Shannon Rabideau

email: shannon.rabideau@gmail.com

Research

I am a student at Iowa State University, continuing the research that graduated senior Theresa Andersen has done.

Borrowing from her information:

Main research goals

• determine if climate models indicate any seasonal, diurnal, and multi-year trends in wind speeds
• determine if the model wind speed trends are similar to the observed
• motivated by research done by Pryor et al. where observed trends show wind speeds are generally decreasing across the US

Research methods

• ncdump data from netcdf files
• write fortran programs to extract data (particular hours and/or gridpoints)
• use ferret to plot data and analyze trends

Research plan
Currently analyzing MM5 wind speed data. Would like to expand the study to include the other NARCCAP models wind speed output

What data are needed
Surface wind speed data from RSM, and other levels and/or models if time permits.

Anticipated findings or significance of work
The models pick up the significant time history trends and seasonal trends; the models do not represent the diurnal trends well

My research differs from Theresa's as I plan to analyze CRCM output wind speed data and then analyze other NARCCAP model output wind speed data as time permits. My data needs include surface wind speed data from CRCM and other levels and/or models as time permits.

Zivorad Radonjic

email: zradonjic@senes.ca
website: http://www.senes.ca

Senior Environmental Meteorologist
SENES Consultants Ltd.
121 Granton Drive Unit 12
Richmond Hill, Ontario
905-764-9380x347
905-764-9386- fax

We are generally interested in regional climate modeling and dynamical downscaling to study future climate impacts on weather systems over Toronto Area- Ontario.

Research

Our research goals at the highest level include quantifying the impacts of future climate change on the weather, design parameters for the City canalization, power demend, heating and air-conditioning over Grater Toronto Area (~ 150 km).. We plan to use the NARCCAP data to initialize the NMM meso-scale weather model and show the impact of weather systems (storms, thunder-storms, heavy rain etc) on the City level. (Horizontal resolution of the modeling will be on 1 by 1 km scale). Our research should help to address these questions and to provide estimates of how future weather extremes will affect the economies of the City of Toronto.

Imtiaz Rangwala

email: imtiazr@envsci.rutgers.edu

Imtiaz Rangwala
Postdocatoral Researcher
Rutgers University, NJ 08901

Research Interests: High elevation climate change, impacts of climate change on stream flow.

Research

My research focuses on understanding the mechanisms of climatic changes in the high altitude regions of the world and their impact on the seasonal water resources. One of these regions that I am currently interested in is the interior southwest US. I am interested in investigating both the recent past and the project 21st century changes in these climate variables under different scenarios of greenhouse gas forcing. I specifically intend to analyze the annual and seasonal changes in temperature, precipitation (total and as snowfall), snow amount and streamflow variables and identify relationships among them.

DJ Rasmussen

email: dj.rasmussen@ssec.wisc.edu
website: http://www.sage.wisc.edu

I am a senior undergraduate atmospheric science major at the University of Wisconsin at Madison that is interested in applying meteorology in the energy industry. I am doing my senior thesis on wind energy forecasting using climate models.

Research

I am looking at utilizing the CGCM3 driven CRCM model results and using the outputted wind data for forecasting future power outputs at specific wind farms across the country. I am hoping to be able to understand how a CO2 forcing in the atmosphere affects long term output of power from wind farms. Will power production in 2040 be greater, less than, or equal to the current output at a specific wind farm?

I am also interested in using basic boundary layer equations and the one-seventh power law to explore using climate data and calculations.

Sara Rauscher

email: rauscher@lanl.gov

Affiliation: Los Alamos National Lab, Los Alamos NM

Research

Our project will look at the likelihood of landscape-scale changes in vegetation in the Southwest due to the regional character of anthropogenic climate change. We will be using WRF for the RCM work and we will be extending CLM to include vegetation mortality. We will be looking at the NARCCAP WRF simulation to get an idea of how well WRF performs in climate mode. In addition, we may use the NARCCAP output along with the CMIP3 models to understand how well models represent the North American Monsoon System, particularly its intraseasonal variability.

Betsy Reardon

email: betsy.reardon@mail.utexas.edu

Research

Main Research Goals:
Our main research goal is to forge a stronger relationship between the climate modeling disciplines and ecology/biology. Both of these disciplines work intensely on questions related to climate change, but almost in complete isolation from one another.

We hope to increase the scientific community's ability to make predictions regarding shifts in species geographic ranges due to climate change. Essentially, move beyond simplistic climate envelope methods and attempt to make predictions based on habitat and physiological needs for key life stages of a species.

Research Method:
We plan to use regional climate model outputs to construct a statistical model for the present distribution of specific habitats. Then validate the model using historic information, and finally make prediction about future distributions.

Research Plan:
Once we obtain necessary climate model outputs, we will simply follow the steps outlined in the methods. We also plan to use the habitat distribution results to identify key areas for individual species.

What data is needed:
We are interested in obtaining soil moisture, temperature, surface runoff and precipitation. We would like to have access to the finest spatial resolution possible for present and past time trials. Additionally, we would like to use the future predictions for different climate change scenarios.

Anticipated findings and or significance of work:
We intend to be able to make predictions about habitat availability for species that are at least transiently reliant on key habitats.

The significance of this work is in both the method and the potential results. This approach to species niche model has not yet been conducted (at least to this scale), and the results will provide valuable insight into conservation of strategic lands.

Shera Reems

email: reems.shera@epa.gov

Research

The main goal of our research is from the users perspective, utilizing regional climate modeling and dynamical downscaling to look at potential impacts of climate change on water quality.

We are interested in the extent to which States' ability to comply with water quality standards will be exacerbated by climate change. Specifically, we desire to compare the flow and water quality predictions at a watershed scale at several sites across the U.S. through various water models such as HSPF and P8 when initialized with both dynamically and statistically down-scaled climate projections. The NARCCAP data, especially the precipitation and temperature projections, would provide the dynamically down-scaled data. Such a sensitivity-analysis type comparison will not only give us insight into the quantitative differences between one approach vs. another but also allow us to better estimate resource requirements for conducting watershed-scale water quality / climate change studies nationwide. This research will support our long-term goal to engage State water quality partners in identifying and implementing options to mitigate climate change stressors on the nations' rivers and lakes.

Christopher Rehbein

email: christopher.rehbein@noaa.gov
website: http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov

I am a maintainer of NOAA/GFDL's Data Portal website, here so I can learn from and share insights on data presentation and access usability.

Research

While I don't intend to use NARCCAP data for scientific research, I am interested in advancing the state of the art in data presentation, visualization, and usability of data access.

Brian Reich

email: reich@stat.ncsu.edu
website: http://www4.stat.ncsu.edu/~reich/

I am an assistant professor of statistics at North Carolina State University. My research interests include modeling spatial and space/time data, Bayesian methods, and environmental applications.

Research

In this project we hope to study trends spatial and temporal trends in ambient surface ozone, with special focus on extreme ozone events. Ozone formation is highly dependent on meteorological factors. Our plan is to build a statistical model relating meteorological and emissions variables to daily ozone using the past 10 or so years of monitoring data, and then to use this statistical model to project (with measures of uncertainty) future ozone levels as a function of climate model output. These projections may have implications in planning ozone standards in the future.

Todd Ringler

email: ringler@lanl.gov
website: http://public.lanl.gov/ringler/ringler.html

Research

Main research goals: To couple regional climate model results to a disparate set of infrastructure models (water, biosphere, power, transmission ...) in order to assess the regional impacts of anthroprogenic climate change.

Research Methods: Using a suite of global climate models along with WRF, we intend to downscale coarse grained climate simulation data to spatial scales commensurate with our infrastructure models. Our initial downscaling efforts will be for the Western US. The NARCCAP data is required for comparison to our downscaling simulations. We also intend to quantify the impact of downscaling resolution (50 km vs 10 km) on our infrastructure impacts assessment.

Anticipated Findings: We intend to assess both the regional impacts and uncertainty of those impacts for the Western US given plausible changes in the large-scale circulation due to increasing levels of GHG concentration.

Jonas Roberts

email: jonaspmr@gmail.com

Research

The NARCCAP data will be used to provide inputs and forcing for regional climate models, the output of which will be used to force hydrological models based on the Churchill River watershed in Labrador.

Our intial plans are to use the WRF (ARW) regional climate model along with the WATFLOOD hydrological model. Once we have some preliminary results using these we will likely be expanding the number of models we use.

Our goal is to get a better idea of the timing and amount of water in the Churchill River over the next century than is provided by the IPCC GCM results. We are expecting to see an overall increase in water flow and a shift of the spring floods to earlier than they occur today.

Philippe Roy

email: roy@sca.uqam.ca

Philippe Roy is a PhD student at Université du Québec é Montréal (UQAM). His primary interest is in atmospheric sciences, and more specifically extremes events and climate variability.

Master thesis, under the supervision of Philippe Gachon and René Laprise: "Assessment of extremes and climate variability over different areas in north-eastern North America in summer, as simulated by the Canadian Regional Climate Model driven by reanalyses".

PhD project, under the supervision of Philippe Gachon and René Laprise: "Evaluation of the capacity of the Regional Climatic Models to reproduce the low and high-frequency variability and it's influences on the occurrence, the intensity and the duration of the regional extremes over North America"

Research

The present study, still at an early stage, will focus on the intercomparison of multiple regional climate models (CRCM4, GEM-LAM, RegCM3, REMO, WRF and ARPEGE) and their potential use to reproduce, as a first step, the characteristics of low (NAO, ENSO, PDO) and high frequency (induced by topography, soil conditions) climate variability patterns in the atmosphere over North America. Secondly, we'll assess the influence of these patterns of climate variability on the occurrence, intensity and duration of extremes events. Finally, we will assess the change in extremes under climate change condition through SRES scenarios (A1b, A2 and B1) and construct, under a probabilistic framework, probability density function of extremes change, based, partly, on the findings linking variability and extremes events.

The validation of climate variability will be done with Empirical Orthogonal Functions (EOF), Cluster Analysis or correlation maps of the simulated fields against observed variability indices. Assessment of the influence of the climate variability on extreme events will be done with correlation maps between a particular state (positive, negative and neutral) of climate variability and indices over North America. New techniques will be developed or implemented to further study the (nonlinear) link between climate variability and extremes.

The high-resolution results provided by this study will help decision-maker assessing future change in climate variability and extremes events by giving an ensemble of projection, based on SRES emission scenario as well as giving an estimate of the uncertainty associated with each projection.

Alex Ruane

email: alex.ruane@qmail.com

Alex Ruane is an ORAU/NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow working with Cynthia Rosenzweig at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA GISS) in Manhattan. Previously, he received his B.S. in Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University and did his doctoral dissertation with John Roads in the Climate Sciences group at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. Alex's dissertation work examined the atmospheric water cycle in global and regional reanalyses with a focus on high-frequency variations and comparisons to observation-based precipitation products. At NASA GISS he is downscaling multi-decadal climatologies over Central America from reanalyses and climate model scenarios, aiming to identify impacts of climate variability and change for stakeholders in the region. Similarly, the Southeastern USA and Metropolitan East Coast are other domains of interest for agriculture, energy, health, municipal applications, and water resource management.

Research

The Climate Impacts Group at NASA GISS is interested in NARCCAP output for several potential applications:

1. Drive further downscaling with the WRF-ARW model to the metropolitan level
2. Directly drive impact assessment models (of agriculture, energy, health, municipal applications, and/or water resource management)
3. Examine the sensitivity of large-scale circulation patterns to climate scenarios
4. Determine the statistics of extreme events in participating models
5. Evaluate the ensemble and member statistics to determine whether NARCCAP-like projects are justified for climate impact assessments in other regions of the world.

Of primary initial interest is the downscaled 20th Century climate scenario, followed by the A1B scenarios in the mid 21st Century.

Eric P. Salathé Jr.

email: salathe@washington.edu
website: http://www.cses.washington.edu/cig/

Climate Impacts Group Joint Institute for the study of the Atmosphere and Oceans (JISAO) University of Washington, Seattle

BIOGRAPHY

• September 1990 to September 1993: NASA Global Change Research Fellow, Yale University.
• October 1993 to June 1995:National Research Council Associate, NASA Goddard Laboratory for Atmospheres.
• July 1995 to July 1999: Research Associate, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington.
• August 1999 to April 2007: Research Scientist, JISAO/CSES Climate Impacts Group, University of Washington.
• July 2005 to present: Affiliate Assistant Professor, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington.
• May 2007 to present: Senior Research Scientist, Climate Impacts Group, JISAO, University of Washington.

Research

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

The Climate Impacts Group conducts research on the regional-scale impacts of climate change on natural and human systems in the Pacific Northwest (PNW), USA. Climate scenarios for this research are derived from global climate model simulations available from other institutions, such as for the IPCC Fourth Assessment. High-resolution data are produced using statistical downscaling and a high-resolution regional climate model. The primary applications of regional climate information are for hydrology, water resources, air quality, fish ecology, forest ecology, agriculture, and human health.

Results from the NARCCAP project would be useful at many levels for our work. Simulations would be useful for basic understanding of climate change and uncertainty for the PNW. Results could also be downscaled using statistical methods or a regional climate model for direct input to other models.

Regional climate modeling at University of Washington: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~salathe/reg_climate_mod/

Nadine Salzmann

email: salzmann@ucar.edu

Nadine Salzmann is currently a postdoctoral fellow at ISSE/NCAR in Boulder, CO, USA, where her work focuses on the analysis of NARCCAP runs concerning the dynamics of the seasonal snow regime of the Upper Colorado River Basin. She received her PhD degree at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, with the thesis "The use of results from Regional Climate Models for local-scale permafrost modeling in complex mountain topography – possibilities, limitations and challenges for the future". The RCM data that she was using for her PhD were mainly provided through the PRUDENCE project. In her MSc thesis she was using remote sensing techniques and GIS-modeling to assess the hazard potential of ice avalanches in the Swiss Alps. Beside her academic studies, she gained practical experience in the issues of climate change impact and natural hazards through several temporary employments e.g. with swissre (a reinsurance company in Switzerland), and internships e.g. at defense civil in Arequipa, Peru.

Research

One of the main goals of Regional Climate Models (RCMs) is to provide high resolution climate (scenario) data for further use by the impact community. In this manner, NARCCAP will become a very valuable source of RCM data for North America. RCMs have been proven to be especially valuable over regions with heterogeneous surface such as mountain ranges. My main interest in the NARCCAP data is, thus, to analyze and evaluate the performance of the NCEP-driven NARCCAP runs in simulating cryospheric (mainly the dynamics of the snow regime) processes in high-mountain regions. Thereby, I am focusing on the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB). The Colorado River is the major water resource for millions of people living in the surrounding areas. The high elevation seasonal snow pack contributes about 70% of the annual runoff. On average, about 90% of the annual streamflow is generated in the UCRB. The perfomance analyses of the NCEP-driven runs are in progress and currently based on preliminary NARCCAP results, that is on data that have not yet been archived. The evaluation includes comparison with station data sets such as SNOTEL and reanalysis data such as NARR. In a second step, I will try to assess how the seasonal snow regime may changes in future (based on NARCCAP time-slice experiments) and what the impacts are for the Colorado River's hydrology runoff and finally the consequences for the people leaving in the area.

Mathew Sapiano

email: msapiano@essic.umd.edu
website: http://essic.umd.edu/~msapiano/

Research

• Estimation of precipitation from combinations of satellites, models and gauges
• Verification and validation of weather and climate data
• The application of statistical methods to geophysical problems
• Climate analysis
• Climate and infectious disease

We are interested in precipitation estimates from NARCCAP and we initially intend to evaluate these against other sources from satellites, models and reconstructions over the entire period for which they are available.

Adam Schlosser

email: casch@mit.edu
website: http://globalchange.mit.edu/

Research
We will be using NARCCAP data to assess simulated regional changes in extreme precipitation (as given by the RCMs) with respect to a climate analogue technique developed (using GCMs). This work is supported by a NASA Energy and Water Cycle Study (NEWS) grant. We will also use the NARCCAP data to assess complementary regional climate impact and feedback studies supported by DOE and UNDP projects. This effort is also hoped to further foster the MIT/NCAR collaboration to develop integrated assessment models in the context of uncertainty in regional climate change (Linda Mearns has been a key contact with us in this regard).

Zachary Schuster

email: zschuster@wisc.edu

Research

We will use the climate scenarios to investigate the impact of climate change in the upper Midwestern U.S. on the effectiveness of urban infrastructure designed to manage or simply withstand runoff from large storm events. This includes conveyance systems (bridges and culverts), stormwater storage facilities, and wastewater treatment facilities. In cases where there is sensitivity to climate changes that are likely occur in the next few decades, we will explore changes in design practices.

Anji Seth

email: anji.seth@uconn.edu

Dr. Anji Seth is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Connecticut. Her research seeks to understand how and why climate varies, and how changes in climate are likely to evolve in the next century in particular regions. This work employs global and regional 3-D physically based numerical climate models. Dr. Seth's research explores the relative roles of local and remote (large scale) forcing on regional climates with current projects considering ancient climates of Antarctica and the future of climate in the Andean Highlands and the Northeast US.Dr. Seth earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Michigan. She has held positions as Graduate Fellow and Visiting Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO, and as Staff Scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University. Dr. Seth also holds adjunct faculty positions at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and Columbia University in New York City.

Research

Global coupled models now show coherent patterns of temperature and precipitation response to anthropogenic radiative forcing, but regional detail is lacking in low resolution climate models, and the margins between regions likely to gain and lose precipitation are especially uncertain during the warm season in North America. To advance the understanding of regional climate response to anthropogenic forcing this research will examine changes in 21st century climate across multiple scales and from the perspective of the Northeast United States. Several scale dependent mechanisms involved in warm season and cold season climate changes in the Northeast will be investigated. For example, mechanisms involved in potential summertime drying are hypothesized to have large scale components, enhanced poleward moisture transport and changes in the Atlantic sub-tropical anticyclone; a mesoscale dynamical component and changes in the low level moisture transport; and fine scale components related to variations in response between coastal and interior sub-regions. An approach is proposed which exploits medium resolution (50 km) global model time slices performed for the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) in addition to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report Four (IPCC AR4) global coupled model (20th century and SRES A2) archives. The global integrations will be analysed for large scale and continental scale changes in circulation and moisture transport to the Northeast. The medium resolution integrations will provide boundary forcing for very high resolution (15 km) regional climate model experiments for the Northeast. The experiments combined with observational datasets for the recent period, constitute a multi-scale approach toward understanding the changing climate of the Northeast.

ZongBo Shang

email: zshang@ucar.edu

Intern at NCAR
Doctoral student at University of Wyoming

Research

Recently, false discovery rates (FDR) has been emphasized in bioinformatics, e.g., genes expression and microarray, functional magnetic resonance imaging, etc. Here we want to implement a similar approach to controll the false discovery rates for detecting differences from regional climate models. The purpose of this study is to look at the regional climate model driven with reanalysis data vs. predicted seasonal climate, and identify the overall trend in climate change and false discovery rates of the differences.

Willis Shem

email: willshem@uga.edu

I am currently a post-doctoral research associate in the department of Geography at the University of Georgia in Athens (UGA). I hold a PhD. in Earth and atmospheric Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). My immediate supervisor is Professor Tom Mote of the Geography Deparment, UGA. The other collaborators include Dr. Marshall Shepherd who is in the same department.

We are working on a project--sponsored by the US Forest services--that seeks to produce high resolution (roughly county level and below) climate change scenarios in the South East USA based specifically on landuse changes.

Research

I am working, together with other team members, on a project that aims to downscale IPPC climate projections to site specific resolutions (in the South East USA) with the purpose of improving the ability to evaluate the potential effects of climate change on forest resource conditions and trends, and portraying the complexity and uncertainty associated with forecasts.

The method will include analysis of the relevant intermediate (downscaled from GCMs) scale data from NARCCAP and further downscaling the best fit scenarios to desired resolutions for the purpose of site specific climate change impact studies.

We are likely to use NARCAP data from WRF and/or other regional scale models that are driven by GCM/NCEP data

Daehyok Shin

email: sdhyok@email.unc.edu
website: http://www.unc.edu/sdhyok/

I am working with Dr. Lawrence E. Band at the lab of Terrestrial Hydrologic Ecosystem Modellers.

Ph.D Student
Geography Department
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Research

I am studying physically-reliable hydrologic and biogeochemical models, and its application for ecological processes. I am interested in NARCCAP for evaluation of water resource vulnerability in North Carolina.

Yongchul Shin

email: ycshin@tamu.edu

Research

The research goal is "near-surface soil moisture assimilation for quantifying effective soil hydraulic properties". For estimating soil moisture, the surface energy balance is very important. As input data sets, I will use the weather data.

Amanjot Singh

email: asingh@creditvalleyca.ca

I am working as a Water Quality Engineer for a Conservation Authority in Ontario, Canada and one of my responsibilities is addressing watershed water quality issues under light of changing climate.

Research

1. To use data for climate analysis at watershed scale
2. To use climate data as an input to hydrologic models

Richard Skaggs

email: skaggs@umn.edu

Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota

Research

Minnesota's climate has become increasingly warmer, wetter, and variable, resulting in unquantified economic and ecological impacts. More recent changes in precipitation patterns combined with urban expansion and wetland losses have resulted in an increase in the frequency and intensity of flooding in parts of Minnesota with extensive and costly damage to the State's infrastructure and ecosytems. We are examining historic climate records and developing a database of key climatic measures and their variability in a current LCCMR project "Impacts on Minnesota's aquatic resources from climate change". To assess the consequences of past climate trends on aquatic resources we are analyzing hydrologic, water quality, and fish community responses. We propose to expand that study to develop prediction for future climate specific to Minnesota, and then quantify the potential economic impact of climate-induced changes in precipitation and hydrology on the water resource infrastructure, including storm sewers, bridges, water treatment facilities, and shoreline development. The current biological analyses will be expanded beyond fish to invertebrates (e.g., mosquitos) and projections of future biotic responses from hydrologic and water quality models will be developed. Lastly, to assist the state's natural resource managers and regulators, we will identify potential hydrologic and aquatic indicators and propose monitoring methods that can be implemented in Minnesota. An Advisory Committee will help define the initial questions to be answered and review products.

Guiting Song

email: songguiting@gmail.com

My research field includes ocean remote sensing, climate change analysis and modelling the ocean circulation.

Research

I would like to use NARCCAP data as referee to retrieve wind and wave information from satellite data. Satellite data including SAR image, altimeter data, scatterometer data and Quikscat data will be used in my study. High resolution NARCCAP data will be a great help for my study in the future.

Lydia Stefanova

email: lstefanova@coaps.fsu.edu

Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4520
tel 850 645 8497

Research

I am generally interested in issues relating to Southeast US climate, including its variability, change, and prediction.

I plan to assess the skill and predictability of NARCCAP regional models' hindcasts for the Southeast US. I would like to diagnose the sources of predictability and skill on regional scales and compare those with results obtained using statistical methods.

I am also interested in the optimal combination - based on hindcast performance - of multi-model forecasts for probabilistic prediction of near surface climate, and the application of such optimal combination to future scenarios that would then be used for driving agricultural and ecological impact models.

Allison Steiner

email: alsteiner@umich.edu
website: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~alsteine/

Research

My research group uses RegCM3 to evaluate the impact of atmospheric chemistry on regional climate. Additionally, we have added a new land surface model scheme to RegCM3 based on the NCAR Community Land Model (CLM). Ultimately, we are working to couple emissions from the biosphere with atmospheric chemistry and climate and evaluate radiative forcings at the regional scale. NARCCAP data would be useful for us to evaluate our model simulations versus other models.

Mark Stone

email: mark.stone@dri.edu

Mark Stone, PhD
Desert Research Institute
755 E Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119

Research

I am interested in using NARCCAP data products to support my research on impacts of climate change on water resources. Specifically, my research is now focussed on modified precipitation, streamflow, and groundwater recharge patterns in the Great Basin.

John Strack

email: jstrack@umd.edu

Research
I am interested in further downscaling the NARCCAP results for use in climate change assessments for the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. I plan to use WRF, run with horizontal grid increments of less than 10 km, to accomplish this. The output from my simulations will then be used to drive the SWAT hydrology model and the ChesROMS ocean model over the Chesapeake Bay. We hope the results will shed some light on future changes to bay water quality, and harmful algal bloom and sea nettle outbreaks.

Diana Stralberg

email: dstralberg@prbo.org
website: http://www.prbo.org

Landscape Ecologist
PRBO Conservation Science
3820 Cypress Drive #11
Petaluma, CA 94954

Research

Main research goals: Identify potential future distributions of breeding birds in California, based on climate and land use change projections

Research methods: We are using species point occurrence data, climate surfaces, and vegetation surfaces to develop statistical models of species' distributions, using maximum entropy (MaxEnt) modeling and generalized additive models (GAMs). We have used PRISM (800-m) climate data to develop the models and generate spatial predictions for current period. We are using the delta method to calculate differences between model outputs for current and future temperature and precipitation variables, and then add the change to current PRISM surfaces to maintain current patterns of local climate variation. We then plan to predict current and future species distributions (and vegetation change) under various climate change scenarios and using different models (we currently have just one).

Research plan: (1) Generate current distribution models and subject them to expert review; (2) Generate future predictions for a range of climate models and emission scenarios; (3) Overlay climate predictions with land use change projections.

What data are needed: Downscaled current and future climate projections for California for a range of scenarios (including A2 or A1fi if possible) and GCMs (at least two). Min/mean/max monthly temperature and monthly precipitation are of greatest interest, but other variables such as relative humidity and cloud cover would also be very useful. Resolution should be at least 50-km grid cells, although higher resolution is preferable.

Anticipated findings or significance of work: We hope to identify species and habitats of future conservation concern (based on both climate and land use change), and provide land managers with future scenarios and projections for areas under their jurisdiction.

Wen-Yih Sun

email: wysun@purdue.edu

Professor
Dept. of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences
Purdue University

Research

We have developed the Purdue Regional Climate Model (PRCM) and others, and worked on numerical schemes, instability, turbulence-pollution, dryline, mountain waves, lee-vortex, storm and cyclones, cloud, rainband, vegetation-snow-land-model, drought, flood, monsoon, and regional climate, etc.

We will apply the PRCM, driven by the reanalysis and/or GCMs, to study the weather/climate in N. America and compare with other RCMs and GCMs simulations.

Jozef Syktus

email: syktus@nrm.qld.gov.au

Queensland Department of Natural Resources

Research

Would like to have access to limited volume of data from NCAR model in order to study large scale circulation changes in Southern Hemisphere and links to Australian rainfall change and variability.

Haider Taha

email: haider@altostratus.com
website: http://www.altostratus.com

Haider Taha (PhD 1990, University of California at Berkeley) is a meteorological and photochemical modeler focusing on the urban environment. He has been actively engaged in meteorological, emissions, energy, and photochemical/air quality modeling and research since starting his graduate studies at Berkeley in 1985. His masters and doctoral theses developed methodologies and incorporated early efforts in "urbanizing" mesoscale meteorological models, improving boundary-layer parameterizations and urban canopy-layer representations, thus improving the regional specificity of simulations and the accuracy of dependent photochemical, energy demand, and thermal environmental modeling. In 2003, Haider resigned from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) to start Altostratus Inc. (where he currently is) and in 2004 was appointed as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Meteorology at San Jose State University. At LBNL, he was a post-doctoral fellow from 1990 to 1992 and then a Staff Scientist from 1992 to 2003. There, he was the lead meteorological and photochemical modeler on the heat island group's studies and projects funded by the US DOE, US EPA, NASA, CEC, TAF, SCE, CIEE, NRDC, and UCS. Haider has published on the topics of heat islands, urban climates, meteorology, and regional/mesoscale meteorological-photochemical modeling (see partial list of publications on www.altostratus.com), has served as a technical reviewer for scientific peer-reviewed publications, technical proposals, guest editor, and invited contributor to book and encyclopedia sections on meteorology and heat islands. He is a full member of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the International Association for Urban Climate (IAUC), the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN), a number of regional and regulatory modeling working groups, and was a technical supervisor for scholars and visiting scientists with LBNL and a thesis committee member for graduate students at San Jose State University and the University of California (Berkeley and Los Angeles).

Research

The NARCCAP data will be used in dynamical downscaling to provide boundary conditions to mesoscale (~5km resolution) and meso-urban (~1 km resolution) meteorological models such as MM5, WRF, and their urbanized versions (uMM5 and WRF-URBAN). The downscaled meteorological fields will then be used in emissions and photochemical modeling of future-year conditions. Of interest is studying urban areas and quantifying the potential of a range of regional mitigation measures, such as heat island and emission control, in offsetting the local energy and air-quality impacts of long-term changes in climate.

Kevin Talgo

email: talgo@email.unc.edu

Research

Effects of Climate Change on Human Health: Current and Future Impacts

Description: In this project we examine how climatic variations and the corresponding air quality conditions may aggravate heat- and cold-related morbidity among adults and vulnerable populations: in particular, the poor, the aging and children. We will demonstrate our analysis in the state of North Carolina. North Carolina displays substantial variability in weather (mountains to seaboard), population density (rural versus urban/suburban), and regional patterns of land use (urban/suburban versus forest versus agricultural).

Objectives/Hypothesis: The overall goal of the proposed research project is to define more precisely the interrelationships among (a) changes in climate and meteorological conditions, (b) air pollution, and (c) heat- and cold-related morbidity severe enough to warrant clinical contact. A secondary goal is to evaluate heat-related morbidity in a vulnerable population: children and adults under economic disadvantage. We propose a novel approach that views climate trends and the associated weather in terms of eight identified air-mass/weather types. We hypothesize that such air masses and the corresponding air quality conditions will have different health impacts on humans, which can be quantified based on statistical analyses of the correlates among the meteorological, climate, air quality, and health data.

Approach: Our work will consist of the following steps: (1) Characterize weather patterns and circulation types over the state of North Carolina; (2) examine temporal and regional variability in meteorological and climatological patterns of the state of North Carolina to identify abnormalities related to climate fluctuation, including weather patterns related to events such as El Niño, and to describe their relationship to air pollution; (3) identify meteorological and climatological correlates of variability in air pollution across the state's highly variable geographic regions over a period of ten years to define the year-to-year reproducibility of the meteorological-air pollution relationship, and to assess changing trends in the relationship over time; (4) establish two mordibity databases, one of hospitalizations for cardiovascular disease, asthma, heat syncope and influenza among all North Carolina residents, and a second database of emergency room visits, physician visits, and costs for the same disease outcomes for Medicaid recipients; (5) address the potential mismatch in the scale of climate, air quality and health data bases to insure the validity of the statistical correlations among various parameters; (6) correlate the occurrence of health data with changes in meteorological and air quality parameters to define the relative risk and attributable fraction of asthma and cardiovascular morbidity in relation to air pollution; (7) apply these predictive statistical models to three geographic regions within the state (mountains, Piedmont and coastal plain) to determine whether the relationship between climate changes and heat- and cold-related morbidity varies in different geographic frameworks (e.g., urban vs. rural agricultural vs. rural non-agricultural areas); (8) examine the use of the global climate and air quality modeling systems to address future regional health impacts of climate variations; and (9) provide an assessment of uncertainty in quantifying the potential impact of climate variability on health using the proposed data and modeling analyses.

Data Needed: Hourly surface meteorological data (temperature, winds, pressure, etc.) for one or two future years (year 2040 or after)

Expected Results: We anticipate that the characteristics of the climate . air pollution relationship across North Carolina over time will be generalizable throughout the US, and that our proposed study will yield important insights regarding the impact of climate change and air pollution on heat- and cold-related morbidity, thus advancing our knowledge of the health effects of climate change and their predictability. Findings on applying environmental and climate data to decrease heat- and cold-related morbidity could result in a substantial public health impact, not just in North Carolina but throughout the United States.

Jeffrey Tilley

email: tilley@rwic.und.edu

I am currently affiliated with the Regional Weather Information Center and Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of North Dakota, and have worked with regional numerical models for nearly 20 years. My research interests are diverse and include regional climate modeling, mesoscale NWP applications, transportation weather, Arctic climate and weather diagnosis and prediction, and boundary-layer flows. I can be reached by phone at 701-777-4303.

Research

We plan to use the NARCCAP data to examine climate impacts on in the Northern Great Plains region with specific interest in changes in the synoptic regimes and hydrological cycle. We also want to use NARCCAP output to initialize higher resolution WRF runs, focusing on the North Dakota region, to investigate variability across different zones of land-use and terrain.

Scott Tinis

email: TinisS@pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca

Institute of Ocean Sciences
P.O. Box 6000
9860 West Saanich Road
Sidney, BC, Canada
V8L 4B2

Research

We're developing a storm surge forecasting ocean model for the west coast of Canada and are looking at running the model under future climate change scenarios. The idea is to use various Regional Climate model output to get an understanding of how the storm surge climatology might change in the future. We would require 6-hourly (or more frequent) temporal resolution for the surface (10 m) winds and sea-level pressure from the RCM.

Seshu Vaddey

email: seshagirir.v.vaddey@usace.army.mil

I am a hydraulic engineer with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the climate change lead on the Columbia River Treaty 2014/2024 Review.

Research

Interested in climate change impact studies can be incorporated into the review of the Columbia River Treaty between Canada and U.S.A.

Steve Vavrus

email: sjvavrus@wisc.edu

Research Scientist
Center for Climatic Research
University of Wisconsin

Research

In collaboration with researchers at the University of Wisconsin and NCAR (Linda Mearns, Steve Sain, and Bo Li), we are investigating the health risks from extreme weather events (heat waves, cold waves, and floods) in Wisconsin and Chicago. This project involves analyzing meteorological conditions from global and regional climate models and how their projected changes will affect human morbidity. Our goal is to establish the relationship between extreme events and morbidity by documenting the cause-and-effect from hospital admission data in the recent past, then applying the observed correlation to project the health impact of changes in meteorological extremes under future climates.

We have already analyzed simulated extreme events from global climate models, tapping the CMIP3 data archive to document cold-air outbreaks, heat waves, and flooding events. We are linking the simulated extreme events to atmospheric circulation anomalies to determine the relative dynamical contributions and the relationship between transient synoptic weather systems that trigger extreme events vs. the time-mean changes in circulation projected under greenhouse forcing.

We will analyze the RCM simulations of extreme heat, cold, and precipitation events over the Upper Midwest for the present climate and projected future states. This step requires computations of daily or sub-daily temperature, humidity, wind, precipitation, and sea level pressure to calculate wind-chill and heat indexes, as well as instances of heavy rainfall. We will compare the late 20th-century simulations of these quantities to those projected in the A2 scenario from the NARCCAP models. We are especially interested in the supplemental influence of humidity on heat stress, the relative changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme heat vs. extreme cold, changes in the return periods and magnitudes of heavy precipitation, and the circulation patterns associated with these types of severe weather. Our research should help to address these questions and to provide estimates of how future weather extremes will affect human health.

Amy Villamagna

email: amv@vt.edu

Post doc research scientist (Virginia Tech) working on ecosystem services investigation in the Albemarle-Pamlico Basin, USA.

Research

Our current project examines the spatial extent and capacity of ecosystem services related to freshwater in the Albemarle Pamlico watershed (NC, VA). Climate change projections become important in this area for conservation planning.

James Voogt

email: javoogt@uwo.ca

Dept. of Geography, University of Western Ontario
Research Interests: Urban climate

Research

Use of NARCCAP data in models we have developed that look at the impact of proposed urban treatments (e.g. changing roof albedo) so that we can assess the impacts under future climates. Our methods are based on using a coupled urban surface parameteraization (TEB) with a boundary layer model, which is used to generate results for a limited number of conditions. From these results we use some empirical relations that allow us to predict the impact of treatments for given input weather conditions.

Chris Walcek

email: walcek@asrc.cestm.albany.edu

State University of NY at Albany
Atmospheric Sciences Research Center
Main interests: Air Pollution Meteorology

ASRC-CESTM, 251 Fuller Rd., Albany NY 12203
(518)437-8720

Research

Main research goals: We would like to evaluate the ability of state-of-the-science meteorology models to simulate the diurnal behavior of vertical profiles of wind and shear in the lower troposphere using our growing archive of profiler wind measurements in the southern NY state. One of my last funded projects with the US Environmental Protection Agency involved studying pollutant dispersion from individual point sources. A long-standing theoretical problem associated with quantifying dispersion relates to the role of shear in enhancing horizontal dispersion. It was found that wind shear perpendicular to the mean motion of winds is an extremely important physical parameter influencing horizontal dispersion (Walcek 2004, 2002). Unfortunately, measurements of shear in turbulent layers of the atmosphere have only become available in the past 10-15 years, and there is little evaluation of the accuracy with which current generation atmospheric models can capture the magnitude and direction of shear in the planetary boundary layer (PBL).

Research methods: As part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded program studying PBL processes in river valleys, a radar profiler was set up in the Mid-Hudson River valley north of NY City that made continuous vertical profiles of winds throughout the troposphere at hourly resolution during an intensive field measurement program entitled the Hudson Valley Ambient Meteorology Study (HVAMS) during October 2003. In conjunction with a NOAA radar profiler in Schenectady NY, we have been quantifying shear in the lowest 1-2 km above the surface in the Hudson River valley for a much longer period since 2001. These radar profilers provide approximately 100m vertical resolution wind profiles at hourly time frequency. These measurements were augmented by 80-hours of University of Wyoming KingAir aircraft profiles and Sodar (acoustic) profilers that provide higher time and space resolution near the surface during several intensive sampling periods.

Research plan. We would like to evaluate the performance of current state-of-the-art mesoscale meteorological models in capturing the basic characteristics of shear in the planetary boundary layer by comparing these models with wind and shear measurements over the period during which we have profiler measurements. The NARCCAP archive of relatively high-resolution, long-term simulations over North America provides an ideal database to compare side-by-side numerous models with the shear and wind measurements that we have gathered.

What data are needed: Wind profiles (u, v) in the lowest 1-2 km above the surface for a very limited sub-domain of the NARCCAP domain (Hudson Valley of southern NY state) during the periods 2001-2004 would be analyzed. We would like to compare statistical properties of the vertical distributions of wind (u, v) and shear (∂u/∂z, ∂v/∂z), and analyze these winds in a dispersion-relevant framework by decomposing shear into components perpendicular and parallel to the mean winds over the lowest 1-2 km.

Anticipated findings or significance of work: Meteorology models are usually evaluated against SURFACE wind or temperature measurements, or balloon/sonde wind profiles that are not available at high time resolution. We would like to compare modeled and measured WIND and WIND SHEAR PROFILES in the lowest 1-2 km above the surface at 3-hour time resolution, which is enough to capture the PBL physics of the mixing of momentum during the diurnal PBL cycle. Since the mixing of momentum in the PBL has never been quantitatively evaluated, we would hope to make pertinent evaluations of the methods by which momentum is mixed in the PBL in current-generation PBL parameterizations used by meteorology models. If it is found that simulated PBL wind profiles agree reasonably with measured shear properties, then we could provide valuable verification that these models are useful in projecting longer-range dispersion of PBL pollutants. However, it is possible that we may uncover some inconsistencies in the overall magnitudes, diurnal or seasonal trend difference, or other shortcomings of atmospheric models in simulating the observed behavior of shear in the PBL, in which case we would hope to develop advanced parameterizations of PBL mixing to improve these parameterizations within mesoscale models.

References:
Walcek, C. J., (2004) Diurnal variations in boundary-layer wind shear. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 85, 1257-1258 (Sep 2004).
Walcek, C. J. (2002) Effects of wind shear on pollutant dispersion. Atmospheric Environment, 36, 511-517.

Shih-Yu Wang

email: simon.wang@usu.edu
website: http://climate.usu.edu

Postdoc Research Associate
Utah Climate Center/Utah State University
4825 Old Main Hill
Logan, UT 84322-4825, USA

Research

The Western US is one of the target areas of the NARCCAP. Our recent study (Wang et al. 2008) indicated a distinct quasidecadal signal of rainfal in the Intermountain West during the past 40 years. It was found that the central region of the Intermountain West is influenced by the transition phases of the ENSO quasidecadal oscillation, rather than its extreme phases. It may be worth investigating if the RCMs properly handle such quasidecadal variation and the teleconnection forcing.

Chris Weaver

email: weaver.chris@epamail.epa.gov

Chris Weaver is a Physical Scientist in the Global Change Research Program of the National Center for Environmental Assessment, located in the Office of Research and Development within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He is also a Visiting Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers University, where he currently has two Ph.D. students. Chris' background is as a climate scientist, with a Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. His research has focused on the role of clouds in the climate system, including the links between large-scale atmospheric dynamics and cloud properties and evaluating the representation of clouds in climate models, and land-atmosphere interactions (primarily via regional climate modeling), including the impacts of land-use/land-cover change, mesoscale land-atmosphere interactions, and the coupling between atmospheric processes and groundwater. At the EPA, Chris is involved in assessing the potential impacts of global change on U.S. air quality, water quality, human health, and ecosystems and improving the way we use climate information (including from models) to develop these assessments and more effectively support decision making about adaptation strategies.

Research

Chris' interest in NARCCAP is from both a researcher's and a user's perspective. He is generally interested in regional climate modeling and dynamical downscaling. As a potential user, Chris is interested in evaluating the potential of the NARCCAP simulation output for supporting our impacts and adaptation assessment needs here in the EPA's Global Change Research Program.

Scott Weaver

email: sweave@umbc.edu

I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate at UMBC/GEST Global Modeling and Assimilation Office NASA/GSFC. I received a Ph.D. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science from the University of Maryland in 2007. My doctoral research focused on the characterization of Great Plains low-level jet (GPLLJ) variability and related hydroclimate impacts on intraseasonal to interannual timescales. My recent postdoctoral research, in conjunction with a U.S. CLIVAR Drought Working Group, has been focused on understanding the impacts of recurring modes of SST variability on drought and flood producing mechanisms over North America in observations and a multi-model suite of AMIP and idealized climate model simulations.

Research

I am interested in using NARCCAP data to understand regional hydroclimate variability, including potential future changes under global warming scenarios. I wish to expand on my previous work to include regional mechanisms operating in all seasons. I anticipate that the use of NARCCAP data will provide a useful framework for understanding regional hydroclimates and potential RCM uncertainties. In general I will compare the multi-model RCM output to observationally constrained reanalysis products and where appropriate to the future RCM simulations to understand changes to regional hydroclimate and the potential for significant socioeconomic impacts.

Hong Wu

email: hwu2@uoregon.edu

I am a doctoral student in Landscape Architecture at the University of Oregon. I am interested in the impacts of land use change and climate change on stream ecosystems.

Research

The NARCCAP high-resolution climate data associated with different climate scenarios will be used as input of the hydrological model I will be using to assess the impacts of climate change on streamflows in the Willamette River Basin in Oregon.

Shuang-Ye Wu

email: shuang-ye.wu@notes.udayton.edu

I work in the department of geology at University of Dayton, Ohio. I got my PhD in geography from Cambridge University, England, and did my post-doc at Pennsylvania State University, taking part in the Mid-Atland regional assessment of potential impacts of climate change, working on coastal flooding due to sea-level rise. My present research focues on potential impacts of climate change on water quality and water quantity (flooding) in southwest Ohio.

Research

I am building a distributed hydrological model to examine the potential impacts of climate change on flooding and water quality in the Great Miami Watershed in southwest Ohio. Temperature and precipitation are the two most important climate input for the model, and the present resolution of GCMs is far from sufficient. Therefore I am also looking at various downscaling techniques, comparing statistical with dynamic downscaling. NARCCAP data is an essential part of this research.

Jim Zandlo

email: jzandlo@umn.edu
website: http://climate.umn.edu/

Jim Zandlo, a native Minnesotan, received his Bachelor of Physics from the University of Minnesota in 1978 and his Master of Science - Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 1980. Jim started working at Minnesota State Climatology Office, a part of DNR Waters but physically located at the University of Minnesota St. Paul campus, in 1981 as the Assistant State Climatologist for Minnesota. Since 1986 he has been the State Climatologist. He has developed extensive computer resources for the Office including databases and extensive web-based retrieval capabilities; public users can dynamically create statistical products, maps, and graphs. He has contributed to and conducted applied climate research efforts and has created operational tools based on those results for a wide variety of topics. Jim has done work to identify non-climatic effects, as might be due to land use changes for example, in climate data.

Research

The Minnesota State Climatolgy Office supplies climate data to a wide variety of users. As local user demands have been extending to climate change impacts (adaptation studies) we have been asked to supply relevant information in easy to access and use formats. A 'Climate Scenario at a Place' web application was developed to sample simple historical climate observations as 'scenarios' in response to the needs of local researchers (e.g. Lucinda Johnson et.al 'Impacts on Minnesota's Aquatic Resources from Climate Change.' funded by Minnesota's LCCMR. Our office would like to explore repackaging model results including reanalysis data from NARCCAP in formats that such researchers would find convienient, possibly with some tools designed and added for specific projects.

Feng Zhang

email: fzhang@gatech.edu

Graduate Research Assistant
Georgia Water Resources Institute
School of Civil & Environmental Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
790 Atlantic Drive Atlanta, GA 30332-0355
Tel: 404-385-1589(O), 770-805-8712(H)

Research

Current Research: "Water Resources Assessment, Planning, and Management in the Southeast US Using Decision Support System Driven by Climate-based Hydrologic Forecasts," sponsored by the NOAA OGP Climate Prediction Program for the Americas (CPPA), NASA, NWS Southeast River Forecast Center, and the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (2006-2008).

Scope: Development and implementation of an integrated forecast-decision system for the Southeast US. Establishment of a participatory decision process for water resources management. Joint project with Princeton University, the Southeast River Forecast Center, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, and the US Geological Survey.

Jingyong Zhang

email: zjy@climate.cestm.albany.edu

Research Scientist
State University of New York at Albany

Research

The role of land-atmosphere interactions has been increasingly recognized to affect climate variability, yet their strengths and regional importance are not well understood. I plan to use NARCCAP data to quantify soil moisture feedbacks on temperature and precipitation. The main statistical approach, originating in the field of ocean-atmosphere interactions, uses lagged covariance ratios. Several other approaches may be considered to be applied. The results will be compared with soil moisture feedback strength computed using other available data. This study will be anticipated to advance the understanding of land-atmosphere coupling over the contiguous United States.

Stephen Zhang

email: zhang27h@uregina.ca

I am a PhD student at the University of Regina. My research insterest focuses on watershed modeling under climate change.

Research

My thesis research is about the impact of climate change on the hydrology and water quality of a small prairie watershed in Saskatchewan, Canada. Particulary, I wish to examine the impacts of climate change on the occurance of alage bloom in prairie surface water. This is extremly important to the drinking water safety of small prairie communites.

In order to drive watershed models under various projected climate conditios, I will need the results of different RCMs (and GCMs). Since the study region is only around 200 km2, I probably only need the RCM results on one (or two) gridbox, but the number of RCM models is expected to be as many as possible.

Xuebin Zhang

email: Xuebin.Zhang@ec.gc.ca

Research Scientist
Climate Research Division
Environment Canada
phone: 416 739 4713

Research

We plan to compare changes in extreme precipitation and temperature from dynamical downscaling approach using NARCCAP data and those from statistical downscaling approaches that we are developing, focusing on different regions in North America.

Xuesong Zhang

email: xuesongzhang2004@gmail.com

Postdoctorate Research Associate
Joint Glboal Change Research Insitute
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory/University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20740

Research

My research reseach interests include studing the impact of climate change on hydrologic cycle, terrestrial ecosystem, water quality and biofuel production.

My curreent reseach in mainly focusing on building an integrated biophysical and biogeochemical modeling framework to study the impact of future climate change in the NCAP area. We have built such a modeling framework to simulate the impact of different cropping systems (corn, soyben, poplar, switchgrass, and alfalfa) on the soil quality, carbon balance, nitrogen balance, and GHG emissions (CO2, N2O). In the future, we would like to use the climate data from NARCCAP to examine the potential impact of climate change on biofuel production in the great lakes area. The performances of different cropping under future climate scenarios will be examined.

Yongxin Zhang

email: yongxin.fred@gmail.com

Institutional Affiliation: Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC), University of Victoria, Canada

Research Interests: Regional Climate Modeling, Air Quality Analysis and Modeling, Effects of Aerosols on Climate

Research

NARCCAP data will be used for examining the effects of climate change on hydrological cycles over the British Columbia. The NCEP-driven and GCM-driven simulations for the current decades will be used to validate the model performance and quantify the model biases. The GCM-driven simulations for the future decades will be used to study the effects of climate change on regional climate, including hydrological cycles, extreme temperature, extreme precipitation and extreme winds.

Biao Zhong

email: bongreat@gmail.com
website: http://hydrology.lsu.edu/personnel/Biao/index.html

Mobile Phone: (225) 454-3019
3650 Nicholson Dr. Apt. 1194 Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70802

Research Interests: Geographic Information System (GIS), data mining, alternative energy, carbon cycling, environmental study, wetlands, and hydrology.

Doctor of Philosophy, Louisiana State University (LSU), Baton Rouge, LA
Carbon Cycling & GIS in Natural Resources
Dissertation Title: Spatial Analyses of Pedosphere Carbon Stock and Sequestration Potential in Louisiana's Watersheds

Master of Science, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China
GIS & Spatial Analysis
Master Thesis: Study on the Application of Spatial Analysis Models in Urban Ecology Planning Support Systems

Bachelor of Science, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China
Information Management
Bachelor Thesis: Forest Resources Management Information System

Research

My name is Biao Zhong, a PhD student at School of Renewable Natural Resources of Louisiana State University, doing research on SOC stock and sequestration potential in Louisiana, global climate change and carbon cycling, Identifying Critical Non-Point Source Areas of Pollution to Bayou Courtableau watershed in Central Louisiana.

One part of my research is about Potential Soil Organic Carbon Changes in Louisiana 2001-2100 Using GIS and RothC Model under IPCC Emissions Scenarios. I will see the difference between NARCCAP data and other IPCC data.

Jingwen Zhou

email: jzhou3@ncsu.edu

Research

Ozone Project Plan

1. Data
1. Air Pollution
• Ozone: 1997-2007 monitoring data
• CMAQ: 2001-2005 numerical model output
• Fused data: 2001-2005
2. Temperature and other meteorological variables
• NCDC: 1997-2000 observed data
• NARCCAP: 1997-2000 climate model output
  2040-2070 climate model output
2. Model approaches
1. Statistical model for ozone as a function of temperature:
   present 03 = prior 03 +f(temp)
2. Statistical forecast model for ozone
3. Climate model evaluation:
   Evaluation of climate models using climate historical data.

Jianting Zhu

email: Jianting.Zhu@dri.edu

Jianting "Julian" Zhu, PhD, PEng
Division of Hydrologic Sciences
Desert Research Institute
755 E. Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119

Phone: 702-862-5416
Fax: 702-862-5427
E-mail: Jianting.Zhu@dri.edu

Research

I am interested in using NARCCAP data to support my research on impacts of climate change on extreme events and water resources. Specific focus is on how to incorporate climate change into the computation of risk and uncertainty associated with future design life cycles of structures and flood control projects.