Jeremy Pal, professor of civil engineering and environmental science, has recently co-authored two nationally recognized articles on the impacts of climate change in North America.
“With projections of climate change and population growth, fresh water supply is likely to become more scare in the future,” said Pal.
The first study featured in Science Magazine, “Climate Change Hotspots in the United States,” identified what regions in America will be most impacted by climate change including the Southwest, Southern California, Texas and Northern Mexico. “The concept of normal weather in the future will become less frequent while extreme weather conditions will be more likely,” said Pal.
Another study, “Future Changes in Snowmelt-Driven Runoff Timing Over the Western US,” found that global warming could lead to larger changes in snowmelt in the western United States than was previously thought, possibly increasing wildfire risk and creating new water management challenges for agriculture, ecosystems and urban populations. The researchers discovered that a critical surface temperature feedback is twice as strong as what had been projected by earlier studies.
The high-resolution climate model used by the team of researchers in both studies was better able to reproduce the complex topography of the western United States than previous models and capture details of the effect of climate change on temperature and precipitation.
The other authors of the study include Sara A. Rauscher and Filippo Giorgi of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, Noah S. Diffenbaugh of Purdue University and Michael M. Benedetti of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. The research was funded in part by grants from the National Science Foundation.
The studies have been featured in numerous national publications, including the San Diego Union-Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as on KCBS Radio.
