August 2014 – The Climate CIRCulator

The Northwest Is Warming, and It’s Not Natural Variability

The northwestern United States has gotten significantly warmer over the last 100 years. Plus, the rate of warming has sped up in three of four seasons. These long-term regional warming trends are closely tied to increases in greenhouse gases, CIRC scientists have found. This “anthropogenic” (human-caused) atmospheric pollution, the researchers say, is a “significant contributor”…

Positive, Negative Feedbacks Balance for Long-term Stability

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is notorious for affecting local climate in the short term, producing phenomena as wide-ranging as hurricanes and droughts. Yet it’s unclear whether the oscillation will increase in strength or frequency as the climate changes. To get some clues to its future, two researchers looked at its past. Previous studies…

David Rupp’s first foray into climate modeling began with Pacific Northwest fisheries research. In 2008, Rupp, whose background at the time was hydrology, was working for the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. He and his fellow researchers were studying how climate was affecting fish survival and salmon spawning in Oregon’s rivers. That’s when he…

Snowpack in Western Mountains To Shrink Over Time

The winter wonderland of snow-capped mountains in the western United States is becoming less snowy. Indeed, a fundamental shift in wintertime precipitation in the mountains and highlands of the American West is on the way, researchers suggest. Across the region, many communities — among them towns and cities in the wet Pacific Northwest — rely…

Guiding Managers Toward Workable Climate Models

With so many climate models we could possibly use, how do we choose? We get this question often, and it’s no wonder. There are more than 60 global climate model datasets available from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project’s two most recent phases (CMIP3 and CMIP5). But many data users — hydrology and vegetation modelers, natural…