National Center for Atmospheric Research

A new study from the National Academy of Sciences advocates for more detailed and interconnected climate models.

In the effort to better understand the dynamics of the Earth’s changing climate, a recent report from the National Academy of Sciences calls for scientists to collaborate on a “new generation” of highly detailed and integrated climate change models.

According to the NAS release:

With changes in climate and weather . . . past weather data are no longer adequate predictors of future extremes. Advanced modeling capabilities could potentially provide useful predictions and projections of extreme environments.

Those “useful predictions and projections,” according to the report, could come in various forms — supplying farmers with better information about what to plant, year-to-year, say, or giving local officials greater insights into future flood risk, or providing climatologists with better information about specific parts of the country most susceptible to extreme heat.

Currently, a wide array of public and private entities – universities, cities and state governments – have embarked on their own climate models. In many cases, according to the NAS committee, this has resulted in a duplication of effort.

To encourage greater sharing and collaboration, the study proposes “a framework in which software, data standards and tools, and even model components are shared by all major modeling groups across the country.” The committee, made up of climate scientists from across the country, has also called for adopting “a common software infrastructure.”

In some ways, the NAS report mirrors some recent efforts here in California, where agencies and researchers have attempted to stitch large, disparate swaths of information into single, comprehensive reports – “news you can use,” as it were. A study released in July by the California Energy Commission, entitled “California’s Changing Climate,” offers up a portfolio of studies on a wide range of topics, from the effects of higher average temperatures on crop yields to the changing distribution and frequency of fires in a warmer climate.

According to Chris Bretherton, an atmospheric science professor at the University of Washington and chair of the NAS committee, this infrastructure can be thought of as a new open-source operating system, designed to tie together various regional models together into a larger — even global — framework.

“It’s a software engineering issue,” Bretherton told me. “The idea is to share the same key models and to have them talk to one another.” The more fine-grained and interconnected the climate models become, says Bretherton, the more powerful they will be in terms of guiding policy and decision-making.

But do such systems yet exist? Or are they, like the future climate events they aim to predict, merely hypothetical? Bretherton says there are some successful blueprints, pointing to an effort called the Community Earth System Model, an integrated climate model developed in the 1980s by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

One California study released earlier in the year, dubbed C-Change.LA, seems to fit the mold of these “next-generation” regional models — the kind that one day could be folded into larger, more comprehensive ones. Touted by its developers as “the most sophisticated regional study ever developed,” C-Change-LA offers a neighborhood-scale assessment of future climate conditions between the 2041 and 2060 for the Los Angeles Metro Area.

Craig Miller / KQED

A bull stares down the photographer in California's Panoche Valley.

California’s ranchers could face a tougher economic future under climate change. The grasslands they depend on to feed their cattle could shrink by almost 40% by the end of the century, according to a study from Duke University and the Environmental Defense Fund.

The researchers modeled two different climate futures for California: a warmer, wetter scenario and a warmer, drier one. The study showed that by the end of the century, California’s shrublands could increase as much as 70% under the worst-case dry scenario, taking over historic grasslands and other ecosystems.

“This could put an additional economic burden on our ranching industry as ranchers would have to replace natural feed by purchasing hay,” says study author Rebecca Shaw of the Environmental Defense Fund. “We calculated that replacing lost forage caused by climate change with extra hay will hike costs for the California ranching industry by up to $235 million per year by 2070.”

Shaw says shrubs would have an ally in higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which could enhance their ability to withstand drought compared to grasses. A future with more frequent but lower-intensity fires could also help shrubs, since less intense fires wouldn’t wipe out trees and shrubs as often. That’s the model used in the study, but Shaw says “if climate change were to result in more frequent, higher intensity fires that killed shrubs and trees, rangelands have a better chance.”

At a rangeland summit at UC Davis last week, Tim Koopman, first vice president of the California Cattlemen’s Association, agreed that climate change is becoming a reality for ranchers. “It’s going to potentially impact our entire ecosystem that we rely on for forage production. It’s certainly going to impact all the other natural resources that we’ve worked to steward for so many years.”

But Koopman says there may be a role for ranchers in mitigating climate change. The Cattlemen’s Association joined the California Rangeland Conservation Coalition and several environmental groups in sending a letter to the California Air Resources Board last year, asking them to develop a way for rangeland to be part of California’s upcoming carbon market. Ranchers would like to sell carbon credits for managing their land in a way that sequesters carbon and for the avoided development of their land.

“In general, I think ranchers have been skeptical of AB 32,” says Koopman. “But if it’s going to be implemented, I think the rancher and landowner community would be interested in participating. It’s potentially another revenue stream that may be able to offset climate change and other factors that may hurt us.”

Environmental groups are joining ranchers toward that end. “We don’t have to be victims of climate change,” says the EDF’s Shaw. “Ranchers can adopt practices that help to store more carbon in their rangelands which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions while making their soils more fertile.

“This allows ranchers to be part of the climate solution,” Shaw went on, “and to benefit from the California carbon market under AB 32. It’s important that we think about preventing rangeland conversion and help to keep ranchers ranching.”

Temperatures are rising for Napa Valley grapes. (Photo: KQED Quest.)

California’s prime wine producing areas could shrink dramatically over the next three decades of climate change. That’s according to a study released this week by scientists at Stanford University.

Author Noah Diffenbaugh and colleagues looked at how Napa and Santa Barbara counties could be affected by a one-degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) rise in average global temperature. They found that the land suitable for growing premium wine grapes could be reduced 30-50% by 2040.

“We were asking the question about near-term decades when we expect much more moderate warming. I frankly was surprised that we found as substantial impacts on suitable area as we did,” says Diffenbaugh, a fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment.

The study focused on the particular climate niche needed by the top quarter of most expensive wines. In the Napa Valley, the study concludes that the average temperature during the growing season could increase as much as two degrees Fahrenheit. Growers could see as many as 10 additional extreme heat days.

“We know that the best wine grapes are grown in a relatively small area and most of that area is in California,” said Diffenbaugh. “Because that area is so small, we can infer that changes in temperature will potentially impact the ability to grow the best wine grapes.”

Diffenbaugh says these are average changes for the areas in question, “but there’s a broad range of micro-climates, even on one piece of land.”

The study was done using a global climate model, but researchers overlaid a higher-resolution grid over the United States to get the granularity they needed to study specific areas. They verified the model with past weather records collected between 1960 and 2010.

While prime land may shrink in California, the study also found that Oregon and Washington could benefit, as cooler areas there become more suitable for premium grapes.

The projections could have a dramatic impact on California’s multi-billion dollar wine industry. Diffenbaugh says it will be up to growers to adapt. “Wine growers are accustomed to dealing with the stresses of the environment and changes. And they’re used to thinking on these decadal time scales,” he said. “It’ll be interesting to see how different individuals respond to these changes as they play out,”

With the Flatiron Mountains as a backdrop, architect I. M. Pei used the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings as inspiration for the NCAR headquarters building, in Boulder. Photo: Craig Miller

While NCAR works closely with NOAA (which also has a major research center in town), it is not part of it. NCAR is funded by the National Science Foundation and managed by something called the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a consortium of about 75 North American universities, as well as major institutions abroad.

About 400 scientists work under the NCAR umbrella, including Kevin Trenberth, a leading authority on the link between El Nino and global climate. Right before hopping a plane for Australia this week, Trenberth, head of NCAR’s Climate Analysis Section, reaffirmed what NOAA and others have been saying; that we may be in for a significant El Nino event this fall and winter.

“There are good signs below the surface of the ocean in the tropical Pacific that this is the real deal,” said Trenberth. He echoed some of the optimism expressed by many Californians that the result could be an overdue dousing after three years of accumulating drought conditions. “The odds are, if it’s a good El Nino,” said Trenberth, “that there is more likelihood of a southerly storm track that’ll bring a lot of weather systems into southern California in particular. It’s not always clear what happens in northern California but the odds are that there’s a much more active southern storm track right across the U.S. and in particular in California.”

The IBM Bluefire 76-teraflop computer, centerpiece of NCAR's supercomputing center. Photo: Craig Miller

NCAR scientists continue to refine their climate models, which have been downloaded by more than 10,000 scientists around the world. UCAR invests $20-to-$30 million every four years in it’s Computational & Information Systems Lab (CISL), to maintain it’s state-of-the-art status. CISL chief Rich Loft says it’s probably the most advanced supercomputing center devoted largely to climate analysis.

Even so, NCAR is busy building a bigger, faster one–but not here. The new supercomputer, which may be ready by 2012, will be sited near Cheyenne, Wyoming, mostly to take advantage of the cheap, abundant electric power in that area. Loft and NCAR Director Eric Barron both concede the paradox that the most advanced computer assault on global warming is itself a huge gobbler of electricity, much of which comes from coal-fired power plants. The Wyoming facility will suck down 4.5 megawatts of power. Barron says at least there’s a major wind farm “right next door.”

The center’s carbon footprint is probably also swollen slightly by its own air force. NCAR operates two aircraft packed with advanced instrumentation; a hulking C-130 Hercules and a sleek, high-altitude Gulfstream V. Sadly, no rides were offered this week.