Ej. Cooter et al., A climate change database for biological assessments in the southeastern United States: Development and case study, CLIM CHANGE, 44(1-2), 2000, pp. 89-121
A regional database containing historical time series and climate change sc
enarios for the Southeastern United States was developed for the U.S.D.A. F
orest Service Southern Global Change Program (SGCP). Daily historical value
s of maximum temperature, minimum temperature and precipitation and empiric
ally derived estimates of vapor pressure deficit and solar radiation across
a uniform 1 degrees latitude x 1 degrees longitude grid were obtained. Cli
mate change scenarios of temperature, precipitation, vapor pressure deficit
and solar radiation were generated using semi-empirical techniques which c
ombined historical time series and simulation field summaries from GISS, GF
DL, OSU and UKMO General Circulation Model (GCM) experiments. An internally
consistent 1 degrees latitude x 1 degrees longitude climate change scenari
o database was produced in which vapor pressure deficit and solar radiation
conditions were driven by the GCM temperature projections, but were not co
nstrained to agree with GCM calculated radiation and humidity fields. Some
of the unique characteristics of the database were illustrated through a ca
se study featuring growing season and annual potential evapotranspiration (
ETp) estimates. Overall, the unconstrained scenarios produced smaller media
n ETp changes from historical baseline conditions, with a smaller range of
outcomes than those driven by GCM-directed scenarios. Collectively, the ran
ge of annual and growing season ETp changes from baseline estimates in resp
onse to the unconstrained climate scenarios was +10% to +40%. No outlier re
sponses were identified. ETp changes driven by GCM-directed (constrained) U
KMO radiation and humidity scenarios were on the order of +100%, resulting
in the identification of some ETp responses as statistical outliers. These
response differences were attributed to differences between the constrained
and unconstrained humidity scenarios.