Intense thunderstorms produce rapid cloud updrafts and may be associated with a range of destructive weather events. An important ingredient in measures of the potential for intense thunderstorms is the convective available potential energy (CAPE). Climate models project increases in summertime mean CAPE in the tropics and subtropics in response to global warming, but the physical mechanisms re...

uncertainties inherent in making future projections, the major factors controlling wetland sea level responses can be modeled. This chapter considers possible coastal wetland responses to future sea level rise in the conterminous United States, in order to provide information needed to understand future threats to coastal resources during an anticipated period of unprecedented climatic change. ...

The current threat of global warming and the public demand for confident projections of climate change pose the ultimate challenge to science: predicting the future behaviour of a system of such overwhelming complexity as the Earth's climate. This Theme Issue addresses two practical problems that make even prediction of the statistical properties of the climate, when treated as the attractor of...

Changes in coastal upwelling strength have been widely studied since 1990 when Bakun proposed that global warming can induce the intensification of upwelling in coastal areas. Whether present wind trends support this hypothesis remains controversial, as results of previous studies seem to depend on the study area, the length of the time series, the season, and even the database used. In this st...

We present a simple method for estimating uncertainty in modeling and forecasts based upon an analysis of errors in old measurements and projections. Probabilities of large deviations are parametrized by an exponential function with one free parameter. We illustrate this formulation by quantifying uncertainties in national population projections and by estimating the probability of extreme sea-...

As a consequence of warming temperatures around the world, spring and autumn phenologies have been shifting, with corresponding changes in the length of the growing season. Our understanding of the spatial and interspecific variation of these changes, however, is limited. Not all species are responding similarly, and there is significant spatial variation in responses even within species. This ...

The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) assessed a range of scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions without policies to specifically reduce emissions, and concluded that these would lead to an increase in global mean temperatures of between 1.4°C and 6.9°C by the end of the 21st Century, relative to pre-industrial. While much political attention is focussed on the potential for global warm...

Recent projections of global climate changes in response to increasing greenhousegas concentrations in the atmosphere include warming in the Southwestern US and, especially, in the vicinity of Lake Tahoe of from about +3°C to +6°C by end of century and changes in precipitation on the order of 5–10% increases or (more commonly) decreases, depending on the climate model considered. Along with the...

The most recent climate change projections show a global increase in temperatures along with precipitation changes throughout the 21(st) century. However, regional projections do not always match global projections and species with global distributions may exhibit varying regional susceptibility to climate change. Here we show the effect of local climatic conditions on the hatchling output of l...