LAUSR

AbstractDroughts and heat waves have important impacts on multiple sectors including water resources, agriculture, electricity generation, and public health, so it is important to understand how they will be affected by climate change. However, there is large uncertainty in the projected changes of these extreme events from climate models. In this study, historical biases in models are compared against their future projections to understand and attempt to constrain these uncertainties. Biases in precipitation, near-surface air temperature, evapotranspiration, and a land–atmospheric coupling metric are calculated for 24 models from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) against 2 models from phase 2 of the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS-2) as reference for 1979–2005. These biases are highly correlated across variables, with some models being hotter and drier and others wetter and cooler. Models that overestimate summer precipitation project larger increases in pre...