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"Localizing Climate Projections: Putting High Resolution Climate Projections to Work for Wildlife Conservation"

Wednesday, June 17, 2009
2:30 to 4:00PM EDT

The Earth's surface temperature has risen by 1.3oF over the last century. This accelerating trend in temperature has also been accompanied by increases in frequency and intensity of extreme events such as heat waves, floods, and droughts. Growing evidence suggests many of the observed trends are due to increasing emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases from human activities; thus, our current trajectory towards even greater energy consumption raises serious concerns regarding the potential for dangerous impacts on our natural environment over the coming century. Using examples from regional studies I’ve led for the Great Lakes, the Midwest, and the U.S. Northeast, I will illustrate how we can go about generating future climate change projections, and how these projections can be used to quantify the ways in which climate change is expected to alter our world. Through examining a range of possible futures, we can identify both a lower level of change that it is virtually certain we will need to adapt to, as well as higher levels of change that could be avoided through implementation of rapid emission reduction strategies.

Instructor:

Katherine Hayhoe, Professor, Texas Tech University

Co-coordinators:

Donna C. Brewer
Curriculum Manager
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
National Conservation Training Center
Shepherdstown, WV

Naomi Edelson
Sr. Manager
State Wildlife Programs
National Wildlife Federation
National Advocacy Center
Washington, DC

PDF of the Webinar presentation:

• "Localizing Climate Projections: Putting High Resolution Climate Projections to Work for Wildlife Conservation"

Pre-Reading:

• Hayhoe et al. (2004) including Supplementary Information. PDF and full text available online at:
  http://www.pnas.org/content/101/34/12422.abstract
• Final report of the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment, "Confronting Climate Change in the U.S. Northeast," and individual journal articles from the special issue of Mitigation & Adaptation Strategies for Global Change. PDFs available online at:
  http://www.northeastclimateimpacts.org/

Resources:

• Recorded Seminar (in WFM format) - (link will be added following the webinar) This will open in Windows Media Player.  You can right click on the video and select "Save Target As" to download a copy.
• Report released by NOAA: Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts/download-the-report

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