Very High-Resolution Numerical Modeling for Climate Extremes in Midwest U.S.

"Very High-Resolution Numerical Modeling for Climate Extremes in Midwest U.S." -- Ashish Sharma, University of Notre Dame

With climate change, the Midwest U.S. region has experienced huge climatic extremes, viz., increase of winter temperature, decrease of lake ice, prolonged growing season, and early arrival of winter/spring seasons. Frequencies of extremes such as flash floods and droughts have doubled compared to the last century. In this study, we explore the sensitivity of very high-resolution mesoscale simulations to hydrometeorological climatic extremes over the Midwest. A series of climate downscaling experiments are conducted using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model at 4 km horizontal resolution for one decade 1991 to 2000. Results compare simulation outputs with hybrid gridded metrological observational datasets from co-op station records and PRISM model outputs. This study evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of simulations and gridded observations for studying climate extremes.