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Projected changes in the physical climate of the Gulf Coast and Caribbean

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Abstract

As the global climate warms due to increasing greenhouse gases, the regional climate of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean region will also change. This study presents the latest estimates of the expected changes in temperature, precipitation, tropical cyclone activity, and sea level. Changes in temperature and precipitation are derived from climate model simulations produced for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR4), by comparing projections for the mid- and late-21st century to the late 20th century and assuming a “middle-of-the-road” scenario for future greenhouse gas emissions. Regional simulations from the North America Regional Climate Change Program (NARCCAP) are used to corroborate the IPCC AR4 rainfall projections over the US portion of the domain. Changes in tropical cyclones and sea level are more uncertain, and our understanding of these variables has changed more since IPCC AR4 than in the case of temperature and precipitation. For these quantities, the current state of knowledge is described based on the recent peer-reviewed literature.

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Notes

  1. Due to the variations in the availability of data, slightly different periods are used for the computation of some different statistics. For time-averaged fields, the period 2075–2099 is compared to 1975–1999. For extremes (Figs. 3, 4, 8 and 9) the normals are defined over 30 years, so those are compared to 30-year averages for the models, 2020–2049 and 2070–2099. The NARCCAP 21st century simulations are forced with a more aggressive scenario (A2), but are run for an earlier period: 2040–2070. In the paper we will label the reference period in the simulation of the 20th Century as 20C and the simulations of the 21st century as 21C, regardless of the scenario used.

  2. The CMIP3 models reproduce the seasonal evolution of temperature and rainfall fairly well, but fail to capture some regional detail. For example, they simulate colder than observed surface temperature in the Caribbean sea, especially in spring and summer, which leads to less rainfall over the Islands in the early rainy season (Rauscher et al. 2008). The coarse resolution prevents a faithful simulation of orographic features, such as maxima in rainfall along the Caribbean coast of Central America and the cold summertime temperatures over the Sierra.

  3. For extremes, as shown in Figs. 3, 4, 8 and 9, data were not available for all models; results shown are computed from the nine models for which these data were available.

  4. Relative humidity is the ratio between the actual (specific) humidity and the humidity of saturated air at the same temperature.

  5. A full description of the integrations is available from www.narccap.ucar.edu.

  6. Melting of sea ice—ice currently floating on the surface of the ocean—does not increase sea level, because the floating ice already displaces its weight in liquid water by Archimedes’ principle, and that weight does not change when the ice melts.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the researchers that produced Figs. 1, 12, 16, and 17 and to the publishers that granted permission to use them; to the modeling groups that provided climate simulations to the CMIP3 project; to the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) and the World Climate Research Programme’s (WCRP’s) Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) for their roles in making available the WCRP CMIP3 multi-model dataset (support of this dataset is provided by the Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy); and to NARCCAP for the regional simulations (NARCCAP is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development (EPA)).

This work was supported by the Earth Institute at Columbia University to inform policy-makers in the Gulf region in preparation for the United Nations Cancun Climate Summit.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY, 10964, USA

    Michela Biasutti, Adam H. Sobel, Suzana J. Camargo & Timothy T. Creyts

  2. Departments of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics & Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University, Palisades, NY, 10964, USA

    Adam H. Sobel

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  1. Michela Biasutti
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Correspondence to Michela Biasutti.

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Biasutti, M., Sobel, A.H., Camargo, S.J. et al. Projected changes in the physical climate of the Gulf Coast and Caribbean. Climatic Change 112, 819–845 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-011-0254-y

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