Climate Scenarios and Projections for the 2020 RPA Assessment
Webinar Details
When:
Feb 2, 2018 1:00 pm US/Eastern
Length: 00:58 (hh:mm)
Advance Registration NOT required.
Premiered On-Demand,
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Presenter(s):
- Linda Joyce, Research Scientist, Rocky Mountain Research Station
Virtual Event Format:
Group Viewing Available:
This webinar explains the process used to select the climate scenarios and climate model projections that will be used in the 2020 Resources Planning Act (RPA) Assessment in the hopes that others can make use of the climate projections for land management planning and decision-making, or for future climate modeling and research (data is available in the FS Research Data Archive).
In addition to discussing the climate scenario and climate model selection process, we describe whether climate selection would change when evaluated at the end of the 21st century vs the mid-century or at the National Forest System regional scale vs the conterminous US scale. The availability of downscaled data, RPA emission scenario selections, and analysis of individual climate models were all part of the selection process. The 2020 RPA Assessment will provide projections under two different emissions scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: the likely low end of future increased emissions (Representative Pathway Concentration (RCP) 4.5) and the likely high end of future emissions (RCP 8.5). The climate models that produced the wettest, hottest, and driest projections for each RCP scenario were selected, along with the models that produced the projections with the least change in temperature. Model performance was evaluated and considered, and no more than one model from a model family was selected.
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