HR: 10:20h
AN: GC32A-01 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Temporal Variability of Climatic Extremes in Mountain Environments
AU: * Redmond, K T
EM: kelly.redmond@dri.edu
AF: Desert Research Institute, Western Regional Climate Center, 2215 Raggio Parkway, Reno, NV 89512-1095 United States
AB: In contrast to humans insulated by heating and air conditioning, natural biological systems notice and respond to every nuance in their physical environment. The presence of certain extremes nearly always limits behavior in some manner, and the lack of certain extremes may similarly permit new kinds of behavior. For example, winter temperatures insufficiently low to kill insects can permit an early start to spring growth, or perhaps two generations in a summer where normally only one might occur. We have few homogeneous long term records at the highest elevations to help assess whether changes are occurring. However, selected homogeneous long term records from middle elevations show that there have been recent systematic changes in both means and extremes in the western U.S. Instrument exposure and local circumstances can affect spatial patterns of temporal variability in extremes, but there is also reasonable correspondence between elevations in this behavior. Recent years show that several types of extremes show apparent changes in frequency, in the direction of warmer conditions, more notably in minimum temperatures than in maximum temperatures.
DE: 0426 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions (0315)
DE: 1637 Regional climate change
DE: 3305 Climate change and variability (1616, 1635, 3309, 4215, 4513)
DE: 9350 North America
SC: Global Climate Change [GC]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005