Using Multi-Physics and Multi-Model Regional Climate Model Ensembles to Assess Climate Resiliency in the Great Plains

Shifting climate in the Northern Great Plains is expected to have significant impact on regional infrastructure as observed in recent extreme weather events. Recent attention on global levee failures from flooding during times of drought, wildfire and impacts on agriculture, have shown the urgency of assessing the fragility of civil infrastructure that was designed for a different climate than will be in place at the end of the infrastructure design life. Extreme heat and cold events already cost US highway departments billions of dollars each year in pavement maintenance and rehabilitation. Likewise, these events also impact the agriculture and energy sectors as heating and cooling demands change and the environment for livestock, crops, wildland fire, and pests are altered.

Here, we present projected impacts of 21st century climate change on the Northern Great Plains region using a set of regional-scale modeling ensembles including dynamically-downscaled NCAR-C3WE WRF simulations and statistically-downscaled Localized Constructed Analogs (LOCA) and Multivariate Adaptive Constructed Analogs (MACA) climate projections based on CMIP5 ensemble members to illustrate the range of possible climate outcomes. Emphasis will be given to potential changes in extreme event frequency and changing distributions of temperature, precipitation and storm frequency over the Great Plains as hazards to civil infrastructure and agricultural fragility (flooding, fire fuel loading, livestock, cropland, road wear, etc.).