Kenneth E. Kunkel

The response of Great Lakes water levels to future climate scenarios with an emphasis on Lake Michigan-Huron

ABSTRACT Future climate change and its impact on Lake Michigan is an important issue for water supply planning in Illinois. To estimate possible future levels of the Great Lakes due to climate change, the output of 565 model runs from 23 Global Climate Models were applied to a lake-level model developed by the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL). In this study, three future emission scenarios were considered: the B1, A1B, and A2 emission scenarios representing relatively low, moderate, and high emissions, respectively. The results showed that the A2 emission scenario yielded the largest changes in lake levels of the three emission scenarios. Of the three periods examined, lake levels in 2080–2094 exhibited the largest changes. The response of Lake Superior was the smallest of the Great Lakes, while lakes Michigan-Huron, Erie, and Ontario were similar in their response over time and between emission scenarios. For Lake Michigan-Huron, the median changes in lake levels at 2080–2094 were - 0.25, - 0.28, and - 0.41 m for the B1, A1B, and A2 emission scenarios, respectively. However, the range in lake levels was considerable. The wide range of results is due to the differences in emission scenarios and the uncertainty in the model simulations. Selecting model simulations based on their historical performance does little to reduce the uncertainty. The wide range of lake-level changes found here make it difficult to envision the level of impacts that change in future lake levels would cause.

Trends in twentieth-century U.S. extreme snowfall seasons.

Temporal variability in the occurrence of the most extreme snowfall years, both those with abundant snowfall amounts and those lacking snowfall, was examined using a set of 440 quality-controlled, homogenous U.S. snowfall records. The frequencies with which winter-centered annual snowfall totals exceeded the 90th and 10th percentile thresholds at individual stations were calculated from 1900‐01 to 2006‐07 for the conterminous United States, and for 9 standard climate regions. The area-weighted conterminous U.S. results do not show a statistically significant trend in the occurrence of either high or low snowfall years for the 107-yr period, but there are regional trends. Large decreases in the frequency of low-extreme snowfall years in the west north-central and east north-central United States are balanced by large increases in the frequency of low-extreme snowfall years in the Northeast, Southeast, and Northwest. During the latter portion of the period, from 1950‐51 to 2006‐07, trends are much more consistent, with the United States as a whole and the central and northwest U.S. regions in particular showing significant declines in high-extreme snowfall years, and four regions showing significant increases in the frequency of low-extreme snowfall years (i.e., Northeast, Southeast, south, and Northwest). In almost all regions of the United States, temperature during November‐March is more highly correlated

Seasonal Simulation of Tropospheric Ozone over the Midwestern and Northeastern United States: An Application of a Coupled Regional Climate and Air Quality Modeling System

Abstract The impacts of air pollution on the environment and human health could increase as a result of potential climate change. To assess such possible changes, model simulations of pollutant concentrations need to be performed at climatic (seasonal) rather than episodic (days) time scales, using future climate projections from a general circulation model. Such a modeling system was employed here, consisting of a regional climate model (RCM), an emissions model, and an air quality model. To assess overall model performance with one-way coupling, this system was used to simulate tropospheric ozone concentrations in the midwestern and northeastern United States for summer seasons between 1995 and 2000. The RCM meteorological conditions were driven by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/Department of Energy global reanalysis (R-2) using the same procedure that integrates future climate model projections. Based on analyses for several urban and rural areas and regional domains, fairly good agr...

Monthly Extreme Temperature Trends in CMIP5 Hindcast/Prediction Simulations, 1981–2010 and 2006–35

AbstractA simple index of extreme surface (2 m) monthly temperature was analyzed over the conterminous United States for 13 models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) hindcast (1981–2010) and prediction (2006–35) datasets as well as the U.S. climate division dataset, version 2 (nClimDiv), as observations for 1981–2010. Results are analyzed for regions defined in the recent Third U.S. National Climate Assessment. There is good agreement between models and observations for all regions for the annual warm and cold indices except for the warm index in the Northwest. For seasonal values of the temperature index, model simulations generally agree with the sign of the observed seasonal trends in all regions except for the Northwest and a few seasons in the “warming hole” areas of the central and southeastern United States. Most individual ensemble member simulations agree with the sign of the observed trend. However, in all regions and seasons, some simulations, in the range of 10%–40%...