Four dynamic regional climate models (RCMs) and one statistical downscaling approach were used to downscale 10 years of historical climate in California. To isolate possible limitations of the downscaling methods, we ...

It is often remarked that most of the western US (Figure 1) is “always in drought,” especially by visitors from wetter climates. The plants and landforms of the West, however, are more or less adapted to the region’s ...

Large changes in the hydrology of the western United States have been observed since the mid-twentieth century. These include a reduction in the amount of precipitation arriving as snow, a decline in snowpack at low and ...

Observations show snowpack has declined across much of the western United States over the period 1950–99. This reduction has important social and economic implications, as water retained in the snowpack from winter storms ...

The variability (1990–2002) of potential evapotranspiration estimates (ETo) and related meteorological variables from a set of stations from the California Irrigation Management System (CIMIS) is studied. Data from the ...

Western United States forest wildfire activity is widely thought to have increased in recent decades, yet neither the extent of recent changes nor the degree to which climate may be driving regional changes in wildfire has ...

Observations have shown that the hydrological cycle of the western United States changed significantly over the last half of the 20th century. We present a regional, multivariable climate change detection and attribution ...

Daily precipitation and average temperature patterns for the contiguous United States were downscaled from a 2.5 x 2.5 degree (coarse) resolution grid to a 1/8 x 1/8 degree (fine) resolution grid using a constructed‐analogues ...

For the 2008 California Climate Change Assessment, to further investigate possible future climate changes in California, a set of 12 climate change model simulations was selected and evaluated. From the Intergovernmental ...

California’s mountainous topography, exposure to occasional heavily moisture-laden storm systems, and varied communities and infrastructures in low lying areas make it highly vulnerable to floods. An important question ...