Feedbacks involving low-level clouds remain a primary cause of uncertainty in global climate model projections. This issue was addressed by examining changes in low-level clouds over the Northeast Pacific in observations and climate models. Decadal fluctuations were identified in multiple, independent cloud data sets, and changes in cloud cover appeared to be linked to changes in both local tem...

Climate-driven vegetation mortality is occurring globally and is predicted to increase in the near future. The expected climate feedbacks of regional-scale mortality events have intensified the need to improve the simple mortality algorithms used for future predictions, but uncertainty regarding mortality processes precludes mechanistic modeling. By integrating new evidence from a wide range of...

We review recent research of importance to understanding crop and pasture plant species response to climate change. Topics include plant response to elevated CO(2) concentration, interactions with climate change variables and air pollutants, impacts of increased climate variability and frequency of extreme events, the role of weeds and pests, disease and animal health, issues in biodiversity, a...

This paper describes a computationally efficient framework for uncertainty studies in global and regional climate change. In this framework, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Integrated Global System Model (IGSM), an integrated assessment model that couples an Earth system model of intermediate complexity to a human activity model, is linked to the National Center for Atmospheric ...

[1] Observations of regional net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of CO2 for 1997–2007 were analyzed for climatic controls on interannual variability (IAV). Quantifying IAV of regional (10–10 km) NEE over long time periods is key to understanding potential feedbacks between climate and the carbon cycle. Four independent techniques estimated monthly regional NEE for 10 km in a spatially heterogeneous te...

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Regional climate modeling Wildfire potential Drought KBDI Soil moisture NDVI Regional climate modeling is a technique for simulating high-resolution physical processes in the atmosphere, soil and vegetation. It can be used to evaluate wildfire potential by either providing meteorological conditions for computation of fire indices or predicting soil moisture as a ...

A regional modeling systemwas applied with inputs from global climate and chemistry models to quantify the effects of global change on future biogenic emissions and their impacts on ozone andbiogenic secondary organic aerosols (BSOA) in the US. Biogenic emissions in the future are influenced by projected changes in global and regional climates and by variations in future land use and land cover...

Climate sensitive urban planning and building design require detailed information on effects of a changing climate. To simulate thermal building performance appropriate data are required as “standardized weather files”. But as historic weather records cannot be used to model building performance for future climate, synthetic “future weather” data are necessary. Here we present the steps to deri...

We investigated the variability of the climate-growth relationship of Aleppo pine across its distribution range in the Mediterranean Basin. We constructed a network of tree-ring index chronologies from 63 sites across the region. Correlation function analysis identified the relationships of tree-ring index to climate factors for each site. We also estimated the dominant climatic gradients of th...