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Limits to the quantification of local climate change
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Chapman, Sandra C., Stainforth, David A. and Watkins, Nicholas W. (2015) Limits to the quantification of local climate change. Environmental Research Letters, 10 (9). 094018. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/10/9/094018
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/10/9/094018
Abstract
We demonstrate how the fundamental timescales of anthropogenic climate change limit the identification of societally relevant aspects of changes in precipitation. We show that it is nevertheless possible to extract, solely from observations, some confident quantified assessments of change at certain thresholds and locations. Maps of such changes, for a variety of hydrologically-relevant, threshold-dependent metrics, are presented. In places in Scotland, for instance, the total precipitation on heavy rainfall days in winter has increased by more than 50%, but only in some locations has this been accompanied by a substantial increase in total seasonal precipitation; an important distinction for water and land management. These results are important for the presentation of scientific data by climate services, as a benchmark requirement for models which are used to provide projections on local scales, and for process-based climate and impacts research to understand local modulation of synoptic and global scale climate. They are a critical foundation for adaptation planning and for the scientific provision of locally relevant information about future climate.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Subjects: | Q Science > QC Physics | ||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Physics | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Climatic changes, Precipitation variability | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Environmental Research Letters | ||||||||
| Publisher: | IOP Publishing Ltd | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 1748-9326 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | 15 September 2015 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 10 | ||||||||
| Number: | 9 | ||||||||
| Number of Pages: | 7 | ||||||||
| Article Number: | 094018 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1088/1748-9326/10/9/094018 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access | ||||||||
| Funder: | Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC), Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften [Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science], Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Norges forskningsråd [Norwegian Research Council] | ||||||||
| Grant number: | EP/K000632/1 (EPSRC), 229754 (NF) |
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