A093-0005
Developing High-Resolution Sea Surface and Lake Surface Temperature Datasets for Simulating Future Climate Extremes

Thursday, 10 December 2020
Poster
Jared Bowden, North Carolina State University, Applied Ecology, Raleigh, NC, United States, Tanya Spero, US Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC, United States, Megan Mallard, US EPA, Research Triangle Park, NC, United States, Anna Jalowska, US Environmental Protection Agency Research Triangle Park, Environmental Futures Analysis Branch, Durham, NC, United States, Adam Terando, Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center, Raleigh, United States and Jaime Collazo, USGS, North Carolina Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Raleigh, NC, United States
Abstract:
Regional climate models that downscale atmospheric conditions from global climate models (GCMs) typically use coarse-resolution water temperatures acquired from the GCMs as surface boundary conditions. However, in the process of going to higher model resolutions a challenge emerges for atmospheric only regional climate models – resolving important temperature gradients in oceanic currents and large lakes as well as prescribing water surface temperatures for water bodies not resolved by the GCMs, such as small lakes and estuaries. This study combines several high-resolution satellite data products with an efficient methodology to produce climatologically influenced, high-resolution (1-km) sea surface temperature and lake water surface temperature datasets for use with regional climate models. The datasets are tested using the Weather, Research, and Forecasting model at a 12-km resolution, a target resolution for CORDEX and CMIP6. The benefits as well as differences for retrospective and climate projections are discussed with an emphasis on examining the simulated precipitation extremes.
<< Previous Abstract | Next Abstract >>