Data · dataset · 2026
Ambient factors controlling the wintertime precipitation distribution across mountain ranges in the interior Western United States. Part II: Changes in orographic precipitation distribution in a pseudoâglobal warming simulation
Listed in National Center for Atmospheric Research
Two high-resolution (4 km) regional climate simulations over a 10-yr period are conducted to study the changes in wintertime precipitation distribution across mountain ranges in the interior western United States (IWUS) in a warming climate.
Description
One simulation represents the current climate, and another represents a similar to 2050 climate using a pseudo-global warming approach. The climate perturbations are derived from the ensemble mean of 15 global climate models from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5).
These simulations provide an estimate of average changes in wintertime orographic precipitation enhancement and finescale distribution across mountain ranges. The variability in these changes among CMIP5 models is quantified using statistical downscaling relations between orographic precipitation distribution and upstream conditions, developed in Part I. The CMIP5 guidance indicates a robust warming signal (similar to 2 K) over the IWUS by similar to 2050 but minor changes in relative humidity and cloud-base height.
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The IWUS simulations reveal a widespread increase in precipitation on account of higher precipitation rates during winter storms in this warmer climate. This precipitation increase is most significant over the mountains rather than on the surrounding plains. The increase in precipitation rate is largely due to an increase in low-level cross-mountain moisture transport.
The application of the statistical relations indicates that individual CMIP5 models disagree about the magnitude and distribution of orographic precipitation change in the IWUS, although most agree with the ensemble-mean-predicted orographic precipitation increase.
Links
Get the data
- Publisher page n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7p84fx3 ↗
documentation · download · from data ucar edu
Where it is published
- data.ucar.edu /dataset/ambient-factors-controlling-the-wintertime-precipitati… ↗
National Center for Atmospheric Research dataset page
landing page · from data ucar edu
Catalogue records · 1
- CKAN API data.ucar.edu/api/3/action/package_show?id=2f99c855-dcaa-4f8c-8269-2d6a375d8… ↗
metadata API · from data ucar edu
Topics
- From keywords
- Earth & Environmental Science · Ocean & Atmospheric Science
- Inferred from text
- Physical geography and environmental geoscience 73% · Simulation 75%
Provenance · 1 source records, 9 field assertions
| Source | Key | Last seen | Raw |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Center for Atmospheric Research | 2f99c855-dcaa-4f8c-8269-2d6a375d88e7 | 11 d ago | JSON v1 |
| Field | Assertion | Extractor | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| concepts[field].anzsrc:group:3709 | enrichment · data ucar edu | taxonomy-embedding@1.1.0 | title+keywords+description (73%) |
| concepts[field].local:field:earth-environmental | mapping · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[field].local:field:ocean-atmospheric | mapping · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[method].local:method:simulation | enrichment · data ucar edu | keyword-concept-rules@1.0.0 | title+description (75%) |
| created_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| description | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | /notes |
| publication_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| title | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | /title |
| updated_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 |