A climate-change scenario for the Columbia River Basin.

Abstract

This work describes the method used to generate a climate-change scenario for the Columbia River basin. The scenario considers climate patterns that may change if the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (C0₂), or its greenhouse gas equivalent, were to double over pre-Industrial Revolution values. Given the current rate of increase in atmospheric C0₂ concentration, doubling could occur within the next 50 to 100 years. The Columbia River basin is in a transition climate zone between predominating maritime to the west, arctic to the north, and continental to the east. Consequently, it is difficult to characterize through means and averages. Therefore, many of the current stochastic methods for developing climate-change scenarios cannot directly apply to the basin. To circumvent this problem, a composite approach was taken to generate a climate scenario that considers knowledge of current regional climate controls, available output from general circulation and regional climate models, and observed changes in climate. The resulting climate-change scenario suggests that precipitation could increase substantially during winter (+20 to +50 percent) and moderately during spring and autumn (+5 to +35 percent). A slight decrease (0 to -5 percent) in summer precipitation is possible, except for the southeastern portions of the basin that may experience an increase in convective precipitation (+5 percent). Low-elevation (

Citation

Ferguson, Sue A. 1997. A climate-change scenario for the Columbia River Basin. Res. Pap. PNW-RP-499. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station.