Identifying extreme weather conditions over the CONUS in the mid-21st century by analyzing the NASA NEX-GDDP-CMIP6 downscale dataset

Global Climate Models (GCMs) have been used to study Earth systems and Climate Change for years. The latest phase of the Coupled Models Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) includes over 50 GCMs, and thanks to the efforts of the NASA team, many GCM members were dynamically downscaled to higher temporal and spatial resolution at 0.25 arc-degree and daily time step. In this study, we utilize the future climate datasets (GFDL-CM4, GFDL-ESM4, and MPI-ESM1-2-HR) that were proven to be more accurate over the CONUS compared to other members of the CMIP6. The objective is to identify the future extreme weather conditions from now until the 2050s when the divergence among GCMs is yet to be significant and it is a future close enough to start planning for. Four extreme weather conditions are to be identified in this study: Drought, Extreme Precipitation, Heatwave, and Coldwave. The preliminary results indicate that after 2030, the Midwest and Northeast regions will experience at least 3 significant drought events in each decade. And CONUS-wide severe heatwaves will occur every other year. It is the nature of GCMs to tend to “smooth” the extremes since the data were scaled down from a much coarser resolution. Therefore, we could potentially expect more intensified extreme weather conditions compared to this study in the future. This study is a supporting analysis of an NSF-sponsored Carbon, Food, Energy, and Water nexus project for MW and NE of CONUS.