 |
Around
the world, including
Ontario, the effects of climate
change have already been upon us. It is important that Ontario
continues to acquire and enhance
knowledge and scientific expertise on the effects of climate change in
the
province in order to provide the best possible information to policy
makers for
the development of sound, responsible and effective climate change
adaptation
strategies. Currently, there is a need to refine climate change impacts
modelling
down to a regional level in order to understand its direct and
longer-term
effect on local communities.
General
circulation models (“GCM(s)”) are models
which numerically simulate changes in climate at a global scale,
however, these
models can only provide information at a horizontal resolution of
hundreds of
kilometers which is too coarse to resolve variables of interest to a
scale
necessary for planning purposes (i.e. at the district/county level).
Downscaling is a method for obtaining high-resolution climate or
climate change
information from the relatively coarse-resolution GCM results. The
well-established Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies
(“PRECIS”)
is one model by using a
dynamic downscaling technique. This project will involve the dynamical
downscaling (by using PRECIS) of GCM modelling outputs at
district/county
scales over Ontario,
as well as, trends of these variables.
This final
technical report summarizes the projected
changes in long-term means of 26 climate variables over Ontario at
twelve
locations and seven regions for the period 2071 – 2100 under
two emission
scenarios (A2 and B2). Significant warming is projected in over the
province in
both A2 and B2 scenarios. The magnitude of warming would range from 4.0
to 6.5
°C in A2 scenario, and from 2.5 to 5 °C in B2
scenario. The province would
receive almost the same annual
precipitation as in the baseline period. However, at the seasonal
level, the
province would experience more precipitation in winter, spring and
fall, while less
precipitation in summer in both A2 and B2 scenarios.
Read the full report
>>
|