RII Track-4: Next Generation Climate Modeling of Winter Climate in the United States

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Nontechnical DescriptionAcross most of the contiguous United States, winter is warming faster than summer, and the warming is more pronounced in seasonally snow-covered regions. Accompanying the winter warming trends are fewer days with snow cover, reductions in snow water equivalent, an increased proportion of winter precipitation falling as rain instead of snow, and more frequent mid-winter thaw events. The rapid pace of winter climate change is hypothesized to have large impacts on the natural functioning of ecosystems and corresponding ecosystem services. The vision of the proposed project is to directly address the need for high-resolution, comprehensive historical and future climate model simulations to investigate future winter climate under higher and lower emissions scenarios across the United States. The PI will collaborate with scientists at the National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, a premier, internationally recognized center for climate modeling. The project outcomes will provide high quality, foundational climate model simulations to advance understanding of winter climate impacts on ecosystem services, engage external partners in the winter tourism industry, and support competitive research at the University of New Hampshire, including in the areas of crop and hydrological modeling. Technical DescriptionThe central hypothesis of this project is that changes in winter climate will have profound impacts on a suite of ecosystem services across the contiguous United States as climate responds to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases. The proposed project will directly address this hypothesis through a next-generation climate modeling effort to investigate future winter climate under a range of shared socioeconomic pathways across the United States. The foundational high-resolution dataset with the Variable Resolution Community Earth System Model (VR-CESM) will add value to future projections of winter snow conditions in the United States at a fraction of computational cost of uniform high-resolution global simulations. In addition, they will permit detailed investigation of the influence of major teleconnections on future snow projections over complex topography in future projects. The proposed work will support competitive research at the University of New Hampshire, including agricultural, hydrological and infrastructure modeling efforts. Results will be shared with three key audiences: K-12 classrooms, institutes of higher education, and the stakeholders in the winter tourism industry. The project complements ongoing outreach efforts through community engagement with the winter sports community and a citizen science snow measurement network. The work will be broadly disseminated through public and school presentations, in addition to traditional channels at academic workshops and meetings.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.