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Publication Date
1 April 2014

CMIP5 Climate Model Analyses: Climate extremes in the United States

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Summary

Climate Extremes in the United States: Extreme weather and climate events produce significant impacts on both society and infrastructure.  Thus it is important to obtain credible information on the possible future changes of extremes over the U.S. Current global climate models from CMIP5 show an ability to capture observed trends in contiguous U.S. temperature extremes, heavy precipitation, large-scale drivers of precipitation variability and drought, and extratropical storms. This provides the context for the future climate change projections produced by these models that show significant increases in hot temperature extremes and decreases in cold temperature extremes, increases in heavy precipitation as well as droughts, changes in atmospheric patterns such as the North American Monsoon and the North Atlantic Sub-Tropical High that affect inter-annual precipitation, and alterations in extratropical storms over the 21st century. Most of these projected trends in extremes are consistent with recent observed trends.

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D Wuebbles
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