Optimal white spruce breeding zones for Ontario under current and future climates

2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (8) ◽  
pp. 1576-1587 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley M. Thomson ◽  
Kevin A. Crowe ◽  
William H. Parker

Optimal breeding zones were developed for white spruce ( Picea glauca (Moench) Voss) in Ontario under present and future climate conditions to examine potential shifts due to climate change. These zones were developed by (i) determining a set of candidate breeding zones based on the relationship between measured performance variables and climate and (ii) employing a decision support model to select subsets of breeding zones that maximize geographic coverage subject to a constraint on the maximum number of zones. Current optimal breeding zones were based on 1961–1990 climate normals, and future breeding zones were based on three general circulation model (CGCM2, HADCM3, and CSIRO) predictions of 2041–2070 climate. Based on a maximum adaptive distance of 2.0 least significant difference values between sites within zones, 14 zones were required to cover the Ontario range of white spruce for the 1961–1990 data. Compared with breeding zones of other boreal conifers, current optimal breeding zones for white spruce were quite large, spanning up to 3° latitude and 10°–12° longitude and indicating large distances of effective seed transfer. Of the three general circulation models used to simulate future climate, HADCM3 B2 and CGCM2 B2 predicted 2041–2070 breeding zones that largely coincide with 1961–1990 zones. In contrast, CSIRO B2 indicated much narrower 2041–2070 breeding zones.

2017 ◽  
Vol 155 (8) ◽  
pp. 1219-1238 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Y. Z. RAMIREZ-CABRAL ◽  
L. KUMAR ◽  
F. SHABANI

SUMMARYSpodoptera frugiperda, or the fall armyworm (FAW) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), is an endemic and important agricultural pest in America. Several outbreaks have occurred with losses estimated at millions of dollars. Insects are affected by climate factors, and climate change may affect geographical range, growth rate, abundance, survival, mortality, number of generations per year and other characteristics. These effects are difficult to project due to the complex interactions among insects, hosts and predators. The aim of the current research is to project the impact of climate change on future suitability for the expansion and final range of FAW as well as highlight the risk of damage due to the pest under current and future conditions. The modelling was carried out using two general circulation models (GCMs), CSIRO Mk3.0 and MIROC-H, for 2050 and 2100 under the A2 Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES), using the known distribution of the species and the CliMond meteorological database. The possible number of generations was estimated to exceed five in the south-eastern USA by 2100. A unique modelling approach linking environmental suitability and number of generations was developed to project the risks of FAW damage. The results show changes in suitability and risk across America, with an increase in the northern hemisphere and decreases or extinction in the southern hemisphere, except for southern Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and northern Argentina, which indicate high future levels of risk. The current study highlights the possible extinction of a tropical pest in areas near the Equator. The two GCMs both projected increases in the low-risk category of 40% by 2050 and 23% by 2100, with the medium- and high-risk categories decreasing by >50% by 2050 and >39% by 2100, compared with the current risk. In general, agricultural pest management may become more challenging under future climate change and variation, and thus, understanding and quantifying the possible impacts of FAW under future climate conditions is essential for the future economic production of crops.


2013 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 331-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea H. Lloyd ◽  
Paul A. Duffy ◽  
Daniel H. Mann

Ongoing warming at high latitudes is expected to lead to large changes in the structure and function of boreal forests. Our objective in this research is to determine the climatic controls over the growth of white spruce (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss) at the warmest driest margins of its range in interior Alaska. We then use those relationships to determine the climate variables most likely to limit future growth. We collected tree cores from white spruce trees growing on steep, south-facing river bluffs at five sites in interior Alaska, and analyzed the relationship between ring widths and climate using boosted regression trees. Precipitation and temperature of the previous growing season are important controls over growth at most sites: trees grow best in the coolest, wettest years. We identify clear thresholds in growth response to a number of variables, including both temperature and precipitation variables. General circulation model (GCM) projections of future climate in this region suggest that optimum climatic conditions for white spruce growth will become increasingly rare in the future. This is likely to cause short-term declines in productivity and, over the longer term, probably lead to a contraction of white spruce to the cooler, moister parts of its range in Alaska.


2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (32) ◽  
pp. 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomohiro Yasuda ◽  
Hajime Mase ◽  
Shoji Kunitomi ◽  
Nobuhito Mori ◽  
Yuta Hayashi

This study presents a stochastic typhoon model (STM) for estimating the characteristics of typhoons in the present and future climate conditions. Differences of statistical characteristics between present and future typhoons were estimated from projections by an Atmospheric General Circulation Model (AGCM) under a climate change scenario and are taken into account in the stochastic modelling of future typhoons as a climate change signal. From the STM results which utilize the Monte Carlo simulation, it was found that the frequency of typhoon landfall in Osaka bay area, Japan, will decrease, although the mean value of atmospheric central pressure of typhoon will not change significantly. The arrival probability of stronger typhoons will increase in the future climate scenario.


2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (22) ◽  
pp. 8881-8894 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed S. Siam ◽  
Marie-Estelle Demory ◽  
Elfatih A. B. Eltahir

Abstract The simulations and predictions of the hydrological cycle by general circulation models (GCMs) are characterized by a significant degree of uncertainty. This uncertainty is reflected in the range of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) GCM predictions of future changes in the hydrological cycle, particularly over major African basins. The confidence in GCM predictions can be increased by evaluating different GCMs, identifying those models that succeed in simulating the hydrological cycle under current climate conditions, and using them for climate change studies. Reanalyses are often used to validate GCMs, but they also suffer from an inaccurate representation of the hydrological cycle. In this study, the aim is to identify GCMs and reanalyses' products that provide a realistic representation of the hydrological cycle over the Congo and upper Blue Nile (UBN) basins. Atmospheric and soil water balance constraints are employed to evaluate the models' ability to reproduce the observed streamflow, which is the most accurate measurement of the hydrological cycle. Among the ECMWF Interim Re-Analysis (ERA-Interim), NCEP–NCAR reanalysis, and 40-yr ECWMF Re-Analysis (ERA-40), ERA-Interim shows the best performance over these basins: it balances the water budgets and accurately represents the seasonal cycle of the hydrological variables. The authors find that most GCMs used by the IPCC overestimate the hydrological cycle compared to observations. They observe some improvement in the simulated hydrological cycle with increased horizontal resolution, which suggests that some of the high-resolution GCMs are better suited for climate change studies over Africa.


2010 ◽  
Vol 67 (6) ◽  
pp. 1983-1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven C. Hardiman ◽  
David G. Andrews ◽  
Andy A. White ◽  
Neal Butchart ◽  
Ian Edmond

Abstract Transformed Eulerian mean (TEM) equations and Eliassen–Palm (EP) flux diagnostics are presented for the general nonhydrostatic, fully compressible, deep atmosphere formulation of the primitive equations in spherical geometric coordinates. The TEM equations are applied to a general circulation model (GCM) based on these general primitive equations. It is demonstrated that a naive application in this model of the widely used approximations to the EP diagnostics, valid for the hydrostatic primitive equations using log-pressure as a vertical coordinate and presented, for example, by Andrews et al. in 1987 can lead to misleading features in these diagnostics. These features can be of the same order of magnitude as the diagnostics themselves throughout the winter stratosphere. Similar conclusions are found to hold for “downward control” calculations. The reasons are traced to the change of vertical coordinate from geometric height to log-pressure. Implications for the modeling community, including comparison of model output with that from reanalysis products available only on pressure surfaces, are discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Bock ◽  
Lauren E. Hay ◽  
Gregory J. McCabe ◽  
Steven L. Markstrom ◽  
R. Dwight Atkinson

Abstract The accuracy of statistically downscaled (SD) general circulation model (GCM) simulations of monthly surface climate for historical conditions (1950–2005) was assessed for the conterminous United States (CONUS). The SD monthly precipitation (PPT) and temperature (TAVE) from 95 GCMs from phases 3 and 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3 and CMIP5) were used as inputs to a monthly water balance model (MWBM). Distributions of MWBM input (PPT and TAVE) and output [runoff (RUN)] variables derived from gridded station data (GSD) and historical SD climate were compared using the Kolmogorov–Smirnov (KS) test For all three variables considered, the KS test results showed that variables simulated using CMIP5 generally are more reliable than those derived from CMIP3, likely due to improvements in PPT simulations. At most locations across the CONUS, the largest differences between GSD and SD PPT and RUN occurred in the lowest part of the distributions (i.e., low-flow RUN and low-magnitude PPT). Results indicate that for the majority of the CONUS, there are downscaled GCMs that can reliably simulate historical climatic conditions. But, in some geographic locations, none of the SD GCMs replicated historical conditions for two of the three variables (PPT and RUN) based on the KS test, with a significance level of 0.05. In these locations, improved GCM simulations of PPT are needed to more reliably estimate components of the hydrologic cycle. Simple metrics and statistical tests, such as those described here, can provide an initial set of criteria to help simplify GCM selection.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 3349-3380 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. B. Holden ◽  
N. R. Edwards ◽  
P. H. Garthwaite ◽  
K. Fraedrich ◽  
F. Lunkeit ◽  
...  

Abstract. Many applications in the evaluation of climate impacts and environmental policy require detailed spatio-temporal projections of future climate. To capture feedbacks from impacted natural or socio-economic systems requires interactive two-way coupling but this is generally computationally infeasible with even moderately complex general circulation models (GCMs). Dimension reduction using emulation is one solution to this problem, demonstrated here with the GCM PLASIM-ENTS. Our approach generates temporally evolving spatial patterns of climate variables, considering multiple modes of variability in order to capture non-linear feedbacks. The emulator provides a 188-member ensemble of decadally and spatially resolved (~ 5° resolution) seasonal climate data in response to an arbitrary future CO2 concentration and radiative forcing scenario. We present the PLASIM-ENTS coupled model, the construction of its emulator from an ensemble of transient future simulations, an application of the emulator methodology to produce heating and cooling degree-day projections, and the validation of the results against empirical data and higher-complexity models. We also demonstrate the application to estimates of sea-level rise and associated uncertainty.


2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (24) ◽  
pp. 9197-9213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Horn ◽  
Kevin Walsh ◽  
Ming Zhao ◽  
Suzana J. Camargo ◽  
Enrico Scoccimarro ◽  
...  

Abstract Future tropical cyclone activity is a topic of great scientific and societal interest. In the absence of a climate theory of tropical cyclogenesis, general circulation models are the primary tool available for investigating the issue. However, the identification of tropical cyclones in model data at moderate resolution is complex, and numerous schemes have been developed for their detection. The influence of different tracking schemes on detected tropical cyclone activity and responses in the Hurricane Working Group experiments is examined herein. These are idealized atmospheric general circulation model experiments aimed at determining and distinguishing the effects of increased sea surface temperature and other increased CO2 effects on tropical cyclone activity. Two tracking schemes are applied to these data and the tracks provided by each modeling group are analyzed. The results herein indicate moderate agreement between the different tracking methods, with some models and experiments showing better agreement across schemes than others. When comparing responses between experiments, it is found that much of the disagreement between schemes is due to differences in duration, wind speed, and formation-latitude thresholds. After homogenization in these thresholds, agreement between different tracking methods is improved. However, much disagreement remains, accountable for by more fundamental differences between the tracking schemes. The results indicate that sensitivity testing and selection of objective thresholds are the key factors in obtaining meaningful, reproducible results when tracking tropical cyclones in climate model data at these resolutions, but that more fundamental differences between tracking methods can also have a significant impact on the responses in activity detected.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rana Salim Abou Slaymane ◽  
M. Reda Soliman

Abstract The impacts of the growing population at Lebanon including Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian refugees, associated with the changing climate parameters such that the precipitation are putting the Bekaa Valley’s water resources in a stymie situation. The water resources are under significant stress limiting the water availability and deteriorating the water quality at the Upper Litani River Basin (ULRB) within the Bekaa Valley region. These impacts are assessed by Water Evaluation And Planning model to assure the water balance and quality at baseline scenario in 2013, and future scenarios reaching 2095, serving by the Watershed Modeling System to get the flow throughout the Litani River’s ungauged zones. Moreover, a General Circulation Model is used to predict the future climate up to 2100 under several emissions scenarios which shows a critical situation at the high emission scenario where the precipitation will be reduced about 87 mm from 2013 to 2095. The aim of this research is to reduce the water pollution that limits the availability of usable water, and to minimize the gap between the demand and supply of water within the ULRB in order to maintain water resources sustainability, and preserves its quality, even after 80 years. In particular, this may be achieved by removing encroachments on the river, by adding waste water treatment plants, by reducing the amount of lost water in damaged water network, and by avoiding the overconsumption of groundwater.


2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (11) ◽  
pp. 2815-2827
Author(s):  
Shengpeng Wang ◽  
Zhao Jing ◽  
Qiuying Zhang ◽  
Ping Chang ◽  
Zhaohui Chen ◽  
...  

AbstractIn this study, the global eddy kinetic energy (EKE) budget in horizontal wavenumber space is analyzed based on 1/10° ocean general circulation model simulations. In both the tropical and midlatitude regions, the barotropic energy conversion from background flow to eddies is positive throughout the wavenumber space and generally peaks at the scale (Le) where EKE reaches its maximum. The baroclinic energy conversion is more pronounced at midlatitudes. It exhibits a dipolar structure with positive and negative values at scales smaller and larger than Le, respectively. Surface wind power on geostrophic flow results in a significant EKE loss around Le but deposits energy at larger scales. The interior viscous dissipation and bottom drag inferred from the pressure flux convergence act as EKE sink terms. The latter is most efficient at Le while the former is more dominant at smaller scales. There is an evident mismatch between EKE generation and dissipation in the spectral space especially at the midlatitudes. This is reconciled by a dominant forward energy cascade on the equator and a dominant inverse energy cascade at the midlatitudes.


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