Examining Projected Changes in Weather and Air Quality Extremes Between 2000 and 2030 using Dynamical Downscaling

Climate change may alter regional weather extremes resulting in a range of environmental impacts including changes in air quality, water quality and availability, energy demands, agriculture, and ecology. Dynamical downscaling simulations were conducted with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model for the periods 1995-2005 and 2025-2035 over North America. The WRF simulations were driven by the NASA-GISS ModelE2 simulations of contemporary climate and Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 6.0, respectively. The downscaled output was then used to drive the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model for the same periods. The presentation will focus on the regional analysis of extreme daily temperature and precipitation events over each 11-year period and the projected changes in those extremes over that 30-year period. The implications on ozone and particulate matter will also be discussed.