The Purdue Regional Environmental Climate Impacts Project (PRECIP) aims to develop state-ofthe- art, multi-disciplinary projections and assessments of the ecological, agricultural, economic, and political effects of climate change impacts on water resources, including the water cycle. Current work is focused on the upper midwestern United States, specifically the upper Mississippi and Ohio River basins and the Great Lakes drainage basin. The project will provide researchers, policy makers, resource managers and the public with an unmatched analysis of climate change impacts in this region.
Goals:
- To project changes to the energy and water cycle of the upper Midwest in response to changes in regional climate dynamics.
- To project how regional biological and ecological systems (including humans) will adapt to changes in regional climate, specifically the distribution of water resources.
- To project the economic and political impacts of these changes to the energy and water cycle, as well as how those likely political economic changes will mitigate or amplify expected energy and water cycle feedbacks.
- To provide additional data as needed to fill the gaps in existing long-term observational data sets and to support the continued improvement of physically based process models.
Objectives and Science Questions:
- To project changes to the energy and water cycle of the upper Midwest in response to changes in regional climate dynamics.
- To project how regional biological and ecological systems (including humans) will adapt to changes in regional climate, specifically the distribution of water resources.
- To project the economic and political impacts of these changes to the energy and water cycle, as well as how those likely political economic changes will mitigate or amplify expected energy and water cycle feedbacks.
- To improve techniques for using currently available observations to quantify changes to regional climate and hydrology and to identify additional observations necessary to develop a comprehensive assessment of water resource vulnerabilities.
Programs, Services and Outcomes:
- Facilitation of multi-disciplinary learning, discovery and engagement through easy access to state-of-the-art global and regional climate predictions that can be used to project regional climate impacts,
- Continued development of state-of-the-art global and regional climate change predictions in response to the needs of scientists making impact projections,
- Development of a comprehensive climate change impact modeling system that will include coupled and/or tightly integrated state-of-the-art models that can start by making global climate predictions and finish by producing regional climate change impact projections, including economic and political factors, and
- A database of continuing field observations and remotely sensed data for use in model evaluation and development.
Advantages, Strengths and Effectiveness:
The PRECIP initiative draws on a cross-section of the PCCRC community and includes faculty from the Colleges of Engineering, Sciences, Liberal Arts and Agriculture. As a land grant university, engagement with regional stakeholders is a mission of Purdue University which is reflected in the PRECIP focus on climate change impacts and information dissemination. PRECIP will be able to capitalize on existing facilities for outreach, including:
- The PCCRC,
- State Climate Office
- Agricultural Extension Service
Facilities for Computing Resources and Data Access: Purdue Terrestrial Observatory, ITaP Computing Facility, the Discovery Park Cyber Center
Strategic Planning and Evaluation Methods:
The PRECIP strategy includes four fundamental elements: observations, modeling, impact analysis, and application. Observations are needed to track changes in regional climate and water resources many years into the future and to improve understanding and representation of the physical processes. Modeling is required not only to understand the relationship between the changes, but in many cases to evaluate critical variables that cannot be measured directly. Analysis of the economic, social, political and ecosystem impacts of climate change and how human and natural systems adjust to it is a core component of PRECIP. The application of what we learn to explaining and predicting the impact of climate change on society is the ultimate benefit of PRECIP.
PRECIP is a multi-component project. As such the different elements of PRECIP are in different stages of development. For example, the atmospheric science component has some critical longterm climate simulations already under way. In contrast, the effects of climate change on ecosystems and society depend in part, on the physical climate projections to precede them. The PRECIP strategy should be considered an evolving plan, but one that maintains the guiding philosophy of understanding climate change impacts in the upper midwestern region.
Contact Keith Cherkauer at cherkaue@purdue.edu for more information.