TY - JOUR
T1 - Scale interactions and regional climate
T2 - Examples from the Susquehanna River Basin
AU - Crane, Robert G.
AU - Yarnal, Brent
AU - Barron, Eric J.
AU - Hewitson, Bruce
N1 - Funding Information:
Modified from a presentation given by Robert G. Crane and Brent Yarnal at The Fourth National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (NHEERL) Symposium on Research Advances in Risk Assessment –– Extrapolation in Human Health and Ecological Risk Assessments, April 27-30, 1998, Cary, North Carolina. Integrated downscaling research at Penn State is funded by a variety of sources, including: the National Aeronautic and Space Administration Earth Observing System Grant NAGW-2686; United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development, Grant #824807-010; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Planning and Policy Evaluation, Cooperative Agreement CR-824369; and National Science Foundation Human Dimensions of Global Change Grant SBR9521952.
PY - 2002/1
Y1 - 2002/1
N2 - One of the most difficult problems faced by climatologists is how to translate global climate model (GCM) output into regional- and local-scale information that health and environmental effects researchers can use. It will be decades before GCMs will be able to resolve scales small enough for most effects research, so climatologists have developed climate downscaling methods to bridge the gap between the global and local scales. There are two main streams of climate downscaling research. First, high-resolution, limited-area climate models can be embedded in the coarse-scale GCMs, producing much finer resolution climate data. Second, empirical downscaling techniques develop transfer functions linking the large-scale atmospheric circulation generated by the GCMs to surface data. Examples of both types of downscaling, aimed at improving projections of future climate in the Susquehanna River Basin (the Mid-Atlantic Region of the United States), are presented. A third case is also described in which an even higher-resolution nested atmospheric model is being developed and linked to a hydrologic model system, with the ultimate goal of simulating the environmental response to climate forcing at all time and space scales.
AB - One of the most difficult problems faced by climatologists is how to translate global climate model (GCM) output into regional- and local-scale information that health and environmental effects researchers can use. It will be decades before GCMs will be able to resolve scales small enough for most effects research, so climatologists have developed climate downscaling methods to bridge the gap between the global and local scales. There are two main streams of climate downscaling research. First, high-resolution, limited-area climate models can be embedded in the coarse-scale GCMs, producing much finer resolution climate data. Second, empirical downscaling techniques develop transfer functions linking the large-scale atmospheric circulation generated by the GCMs to surface data. Examples of both types of downscaling, aimed at improving projections of future climate in the Susquehanna River Basin (the Mid-Atlantic Region of the United States), are presented. A third case is also described in which an even higher-resolution nested atmospheric model is being developed and linked to a hydrologic model system, with the ultimate goal of simulating the environmental response to climate forcing at all time and space scales.
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U2 - 10.1080/20028091056782
DO - 10.1080/20028091056782
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:1542368482
SN - 1080-7039
VL - 8
SP - 147
EP - 158
JO - Human and Ecological Risk Assessment
JF - Human and Ecological Risk Assessment
IS - 1
ER -
