Sunday, February 09, 2014

Figure of the day

Regional temp and precipitation changes for two scenarios in 2100, from Week 2 of the Climate MOOC:


Being a water guy, I'm focusing on the precip. Central America is screwed. And sell any farmland you own in the eastern Mediterranean basin.

If that increased precip in the western Pacific is from storms instead of steady rain, that could be unpleasant. Something China might want to consider.

3 comments:

John Mashey said...

I haven't looked for a bit, but of course those graphs sometimes aggregate regions big enough that an average change of 0 masks a North South difference ... as I'd suspect of WNA. I.e., Seattle may differe from San Diego.

Bernard J. said...

John Mashey.

The same observation applies to the Australian context, especially in the south.

Further, it doesn't account for seasonal shifts - in the west of my state for example the summer precipitation is predicted to drop by 30-40% even though the annual precipitation is expected to be roughly the same. This has profound consequences for the world heritage listed old growth forests there, which I suspect will likely transition from moist cool temperate rainforest to dry schlerophyll open bushland or even to scrubland or grassland by the end of the century, depending on the increase in wildfire that will follow the change in precipitation regime. Given the uniqueness of these ancient forests this is a profoundly disturbing result indeed.

John Mashey said...

Yes, note this is no criticism of the graph, as any graph can only do so much. But indeed, OZ is one of the places I worry about on climate.