HR: 0800h
AN: GC21A-0126    [Abstracts]
TI: NARCCAP - First Analyzes Concerning the Snow Regime of the Upper Colorado River Basin
AU: * Salzmann, N
EM: salzmann@ucar.edu
AF: National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Institute for the Study of Society and Environment (ISSE), P.O. Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307, United States
AU: Anderson, C J
EM: Christopher.J.Anderson@noaa.gov
AF: NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305, United States
AU: Mearns, L O
EM: lindam@ucar.edu
AF: National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Institute for the Study of Society and Environment (ISSE), P.O. Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307, United States
AB: One of the main goals of Regional Climate Models (RCMs) is to provide high resolution climate (scenario) data for further use by the impact community. RCMs have been proven to be especially valuable over regions with heterogeneous surface such as mountain ranges. With the North American Regional Climate Change Program (NARCCAP), there is now a promising source of RCM runs (for current and scenario climate conditions) to serve the climate impacts community of North America. First NARCCAP runs have been made available very recently. In this presentation, we show and discuss first analyzes of NCEP-driven NARCCAP runs. Thereby, we center on the RCM performance regarding the seasonal snow regime of the Rocky Mountains, with special focus on the region of the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB). The streamflow of the seasonal snow cover of the UCRB is the major water resource for the Colorado River and thus also for millions of people living in the surrounding areas. In a further step of this study, it is therefore planned to use results from NARCCAP model runs as input variables to run a hydrological runoff model. This will allow us to assess the impact of changes in the snow regime on the availability of freshwater for the regions depending on the water supplied by the Colorado River.
DE: 1621 Cryospheric change (0776)
DE: 1630 Impacts of global change (1225)
DE: 1637 Regional climate change
DE: 1655 Water cycles (1836)
DE: 1807 Climate impacts
SC: Global Environmental Change [GC]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting