Abstract

Planning for the effects of climate change on natural resources often requires detailed projections of future climate at scales consistent with the processes managers typically consider. While it is numerically possible to produce downscaled climate at very fine scales (<5km), both the absence of a sufficiently dense network of long term climate observations and the presence of local contingencies such as topography and land surface feedbacks from vegetation and snowpack make accurate estimation at these scales difficult and less tractable without very detailed local information. For such purposes as developing adaptation strategies, vulnerability assessments, climate impacts assessments, and specific resource modeling at landscape scales, downscaled projections can be developed that maximize translation of climatic information from the coarser scales of global climate models (GCMs) to more local scales. This project was designed to provide climate information that meets those needs and creates a basis for more detailed work or for a more comprehensive approach to downscaling and regional climate modeling.