Potential Future Climate Conditions Research Articles

Analyzing Urban Climatic Shifts in Annaba City: Decadal Trends, Seasonal Variability and Extreme Weather Events

Global warming is one of the most pressing challenges of our time, contributing to climate change effects and with far-reaching implications for built environments. The main aim of this study is to assess the extent to which Annaba city, Algeria, as part of the Mediterranean region, is affected by global climate change and its broader influences. The study investigated climatic shifts in Annaba city, using a multi-step methodology integrating data collection and analysis techniques. Data collection included 23 years of climate data (2000–2023) from Annaba’s meteorological station, on-site measurements of microclimatic variations, and a questionnaire survey. The collected data underwent four main analyses: a time series analysis to describe climate parameters over 23 years, a statistical analysis to predict potential future climatic conditions (2024–2029) and the correlation of various climatic variables using specialized bioclimate tools to highlight seasonal variability, a spatial study of the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon and perceived climatic shifts, and an analysis of extreme weather events characterizing heat atmospheric events in the context of urban climate change in the Mediterranean region. The findings revealed a consistent warming trend in Annaba city, with prolonged extreme climate conditions observed, particularly in the last four years (2020–2023). Significant temperature fluctuations were emphasized, notably in July 2023, with record-breaking maximum temperatures reaching 48.2 °C, the hottest on record with an increase of 3.8 °C, and presenting challenges amplified by the urban heat island effect, causing temperature differentials of up to 6 °C within built-up areas. Projections for 2029 suggest a tendency towards heightened aridity with a significant shift towards a new climate seasonality featuring two distinct main seasons—moderate and hot challenging. The abrupt disruption of calm weather conditions in Annaba on 24 July 2023 highlighted the influence of atmospheric circulation within the Mediterranean region featured for both anticyclones and atmospheric blocking phenomena on local weather patterns.

Global reductions in manual agricultural work capacity due to climate change.

Manual outdoor work is essential in many agricultural systems. Climate change will make such work more stressful in many regions due to heat exposure. The physical work capacity metric (PWC) is a physiologically based approach that estimates an individual's work capacity relative to an environment without any heat stress. We computed PWC under recent past and potential future climate conditions. Daily values were computed from five earth system models for three emission scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5) and three time periods: 1991-2010 (recent past), 2041-2060 (mid-century) and 2081-2100 (end-century). Average daily PWC values were aggregated for the entire year, the growing season, and the warmest 90-day period of the year. Under recent past climate conditions, the growing season PWC was below 0.86 (86% of full work capacity) on half the current global cropland. With end-century/SSP5-8.5 thermal conditions this value was reduced to 0.7, with most affected crop-growing regions in Southeast and South Asia, West and Central Africa, and northern South America. Average growing season PWC could falls below 0.4 in some important food production regions such as the Indo-Gangetic plains in Pakistan and India. End-century PWC reductions were substantially greater than mid-century reductions. This paper assesses two potential adaptions-reducing direct solar radiation impacts with shade or working at night and reducing the need for hard physical labor with increased mechanization. Removing the effect of direct solar radiation impacts improved PWC values by 0.05 to 0.10 in the hottest periods and regions. Adding mechanization to increase horsepower (HP) per hectare to levels similar to those in some higher income countries would require a 22% increase in global HP availability with Sub-Saharan Africa needing the most. There may be scope for shifting to less labor-intensive crops or those with labor peaks in cooler periods or shift work to early morning.

Simulating synergistic effects of climate change and conservation practices on greenhouse gas emissions and crop growth in long-term maize cropping systems

Understanding the impacts of future climate change and long-term agronomic practices on environmental quality and agricultural productivity is critical to the development of sustainable agronomic management approaches. Given these requirements, the present study’s objective was to evaluate the potential impacts of climate change and long-term conservation practices on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and crop growth. To project potential future (2065–2084) climatic conditions for a field under a long-term maize cropping system situated in Nebraska (USA), 12 different combinations of regional climate models × global climate models (RCMs-GCMs) were generated under representative concentration pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) and a heightened atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]atm = 714.1 ppm). Then, employing a well-calibrated instance of the Root Zone Water Quality Model (RZWQM2), the effects of four long-term conservation practices were simulated under the 12 RCMs-GCMs. Compared to other climatic factors (e.g., shortwave radiation, wind run, and relative humidity), temperature, precipitation, and [CO2]atm played more important roles for future carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, global warming potential (GWP), soil organic carbon (SOC), crop yield, and total crop biomass. The sum of their relative contributions to GHG emissions and crop growth exceeded 83.9 % across all treatments. Under future climatic conditions, CO2 and N2O emissions increased significantly — 19.4 % ± 5.8 % and 26.6 % ± 8.9 %, respectively — compared to those under historical baseline conditions. Likewise, the GWP increased by 19.8 ± 5.8 %. Although rising [CO2]atm afforded limited benefits in terms of crop photosynthesis rates, rising future temperatures shortened crop growth cycles, resulting in a net decrease of 9.1 % ± 1.9 % in maize yield and 4.2 % ± 1.6 % in total biomass. SOC saw a net increase of 4.8 % ± 0.4 % under the future (vs. baseline) climate. Compared to residue removal with no-till treatment, annual CO2 and N2O emissions in the long-term maize cropping system were predicted to increase by 26.8 % and 27.9 % between 2065 and 2084 under residue retention with tillage treatment, respectively. Whereas crop yield and biomass were not significantly affected by residue or tillage management practices. The simulation method provided valuable evidence for management decisions to assess the synergistic effects of climate change and long-term agronomic practices on the environment and agricultural productivity. Further investigation is needed on the effects of other climate RCPs and agronomic management for sustainable agricultural production.

Microbial growth under drought is confined to distinct taxa and modified by potential future climate conditions

Climate change increases the frequency and intensity of drought events, affecting soil functions including carbon sequestration and nutrient cycling, which are driven by growing microorganisms. Yet we know little about microbial responses to drought due to methodological limitations. Here, we estimate microbial growth rates in montane grassland soils exposed to ambient conditions, drought, and potential future climate conditions (i.e., soils exposed to 6 years of elevated temperatures and elevated CO2 levels). For this purpose, we combined 18O-water vapor equilibration with quantitative stable isotope probing (termed ‘vapor-qSIP’) to measure taxon-specific microbial growth in dry soils. In our experiments, drought caused >90% of bacterial and archaeal taxa to stop dividing and reduced the growth rates of persisting ones. Under drought, growing taxa accounted for only 4% of the total community as compared to 35% in the controls. Drought-tolerant communities were dominated by specialized members of the Actinobacteriota, particularly the genus Streptomyces. Six years of pre-exposure to future climate conditions (3 °C warming and + 300 ppm atmospheric CO2) alleviated drought effects on microbial growth, through more drought-tolerant taxa across major phyla, accounting for 9% of the total community. Our results provide insights into the response of active microbes to drought today and in a future climate, and highlight the importance of studying drought in combination with future climate conditions to capture interactive effects and improve predictions of future soil-climate feedbacks.

The Changing Nature of Hazardous Weather and Implications for Transportation: Example from Oklahoma, USA

Central Oklahoma is undergoing investment in new intermodal transportation and rehabilitation of its infrastructure. Despite a highly variable historical climate, future changes resulting from anthropogenic climate change may be outside of the range for which infrastructure was designed. We examined 21st century trends, focusing on weather and climate extremes of demonstrated importance to transportation professionals as identified through expert input. We assessed trends from a suite of 15 global climate models (GCMs) using two emissions scenarios and two high-resolution statistically downscaled datasets. This ensemble provided a quantitative range for potential future climate conditions whilst revealing uncertainties associated with different models and downscaling methods. Our results support the general consensus of a reduction in the frequency of cold temperatures, freeze–thaw cycles, and winter weather; however, for the latter, there is not necessarily a reduction in intensity. Extreme heat days (e.g., days ≥100 °F) increased by factors of 3–6, with this upper range associated with high greenhouse gas emissions, while the seasonal duration of extreme heat extended by 4–10 weeks. Projected return intervals for heavy rainfall increased in frequency and magnitude in the mid and late 21st century. Although the contribution of the emissions pathway to these changes is evident, different extreme value distributions and the varying simulations of precipitation from the GCMs have a large effect on magnitudes, leading to a range of possible futures to consider in infrastructure design. Precipitation metrics, particularly at the extremes, were more sensitive to the selection of downscaled data, as compared with temperature metrics. Our approach represents a resource for transportation professionals seeking to identify changing risk probabilities at regional to local scales, as a precursor to planning and adaptation.

Health Status of Oilseed Rape Plants Grown under Potential Future Climatic Conditions Assessed by Invasive and Non-Invasive Techniques

Environmental conditions affect many plant traits such as biochemistry, physiology, morphology, and even their distribution around the world. Human activities have increased greenhouse gas emissions, which will promote a global rise in temperatures. The impact of climate change on natural vegetation and crops is difficult to predict, making it necessary to conduct experiments that mimic potential future climate conditions. Here, oilseed rape has been grown under environmental conditions that reproduce severe and intermediate climate change, setting the current climatic conditions as a control, with the main objective of evaluating the impact of climate change on the health status of this plant of agronomic interest. For such a purpose, two approaches (invasive and non-invasive) have been applied. Invasive quantitative measurements are based on the absorbance of biochemical compounds. Non-invasive methods such as thermal, multicolor fluorescence, and hyperspectral reflectance imaging sensors rely on the spectral properties of the plants. The results revealed that climate change induced lipid peroxidation, as well as alterations in pigment composition, transpiration, photosynthesis, and secondary plant metabolism. Those changes were more drastic the more severe the climatic condition imposed. Novel vegetation indices obtained from hyperspectral reflectance and specifically tailored to detect stress in brassicas correlated with physiological traits such as lipid peroxidation and secondary plant metabolism.

On the evaluation of climate change impact models

AbstractIn‐depth understanding of the potential implications of climate change is required to guide decision‐ and policy‐makers when developing adaptation strategies and designing infrastructure suitable for future conditions. Impact models that translate potential future climate conditions into variables of interest are needed to create the causal connection between a changing climate and its impact for different sectors. Recent surveys suggest that the primary strategy for validating such models (and hence for justifying their use) heavily relies on assessing the accuracy of model simulations by comparing them against historical observations. We argue that such a comparison is necessary and valuable, but not sufficient to achieve a comprehensive evaluation of climate change impact models. We believe that a complementary, largely observation‐independent, step of model evaluation is needed to ensure more transparency of model behavior and greater robustness of scenario‐based analyses. This step should address the following four questions: (1) Do modeled dominant process controls match our system perception? (2) Is my model's sensitivity to changing forcing as expected? (3) Do modeled decision levers show adequate influence? (4) Can we attribute uncertainty sources throughout the projection horizon? We believe that global sensitivity analysis, with its ability to investigate a model's response to joint variations of multiple inputs in a structured way, offers a coherent approach to address all four questions comprehensively. Such additional model evaluation would strengthen stakeholder confidence in model projections and, therefore, into the adaptation strategies derived with the help of impact models.This article is categorized under: Climate Models and Modeling > Knowledge Generation with Models Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Evaluating Future Impacts of Climate Change

Climate change and the hydropower sector: A global review

AbstractRenewable sources of electricity, such as solar and wind, need to be paired with sources of reliable baseload. Hydropower is a renewable, low‐emission source of electricity baseload available throughout much of the world as an alternative to electricity conventionally provided by thermal combustion of fossil fuels; however, the global hydropower sector as it stands relies upon surface water flows of substantial and predictable volume. This makes it vulnerable to climate change. The impact of climate change on the hydropower sector is difficult to predict, and not globally uniform. It might be positive, negative, or inconsequential depending upon the local timing and magnitude of changes, reservoir size, allocation priority, and the energy market. The secondary effects of climate change on glacier lake outbursts floods, landslides, and sediment load are poorly understood. In addition, when planning hydropower projects for the future, attention must be given to the greenhouse gas contribution of the impounded waters behind storage dams, and the impact of dams on water temperature. In the past decade, sovereign nations and international development agencies worldwide have evaluated the potential of hydropower as a cost‐effective, clean, sustainable option for baseload electricity supply. There is therefore a crucial need to assess the opportunities and risks hydropower poses across a wide range of potential future climate conditions. This review paper conducts a global survey of the literature on the effect of climate change on hydropower and identifies room for improvement in current approaches to evaluation of the net benefits of hydropower projects under climate change.This article is categorized under: Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Learning from Cases and Analogies Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Evaluating Future Impacts of Climate Change

Modelling climate change impacts on distribution of Himalayan pheasants

Well known at landscape regions, the environmental change will influence the mountain ecosystem around the globe. The impacts of climate change on animal-specific interaction remain inadequately reported. For the assessment of mountain biological systems, environmental models assume a significant job in recognizing and monitoring critical habitat under the potential future climatic conditions. Our paper, utilizing the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs-2050), the future global warming climatic scenarios, explores the trend of range shifts of Himalayan pheasants in the Eastern Himalayas based on an ensemble technique. The prediction model demonstrated that the core zone habitat of the Himalayan pheasants would have shifted towards higher altitude and latitude gradients with the greenhouse gaseous intensification. Under the extreme future climatic scenario, the species may reach towards Sky Island of the Himalayan regions. Therefore, a legitimate policy is essential to implement on time for the mitigation of the greenhouse gaseous emission. The outcome of this article illuminated that the present protected areas (PAs) of the Eastern Himalayas appeared to be inadequate regarding conservation measures of Himalayan Pheasants due to the current range may go rapidly beyond the protected zones. The shifting of the range of the Himalayan pheasants under future climatic scenarios will offer an indication for conservation directives to formulate appropriate strategies for habitat management of the threatened animals of the Himalayan ecosystem before the door of annihilation.

Climate change and angling behavior on the North shore of Lake Superior (USA)

Angling in Minnesota’s North Shore faces unique threats from the impacts of climate change. These impacts, such as changes in the presence and/or abundance of specific species, present management challenges which might also influence the demand for recreational angling throughout the region. Anglers’ adaptations to climate change in the North Shore region could shift densities, timing, and spatial use of the region’s fish populations, increasing the stress on ecological systems. Developing an empirically grounded understanding of the contingent behaviors of anglers is imperative if the region’s fish populations are to be managed sustainably. Using a travel cost model, we measure the demand for angling under current conditions and potential future climate and environmental conditions. Our research also explores the adaptive and coping behaviors of anglers. Results suggest North Shore anglers are not likely to alter the total number of trips they take to the region in the future as climate and environmental conditions change. Among the adaptive and coping behaviors we asked about, anglers indicated they are most likely to engage in a different activity (activity substitution) as conditions change; they also indicated a willingness to fish elsewhere (spatial substitution). Rescheduling or canceling angling trips (temporal substitution) was the least preferred adaptive/coping behavior. Further research is needed to understand why anglers’ future trip-taking behaviors are not responsive to changes in climate and environmental conditions, though their adaptive and coping behaviors are. Our findings can be used to help managers maintain the satisfaction, experiences, and participation of future generations of anglers.

Adapting urban best management practices for resilience to long-term environmental changes.

Stormwater best management practices (BMPs) help mitigate the adverse effects of urban development on stream hydrology and water quality, and are widely specified in development requirements and watershed management plans. However, design of stormwater BMPs largely relies on experience with historic climate, which may not be a reliable guide to the future. To inform BMP design that is robust to future conditions, it is important to examine how potential changes in precipitation, temperature, and potential evapotranspiration will affect the performance of BMPs. We use continuous simulation modeling to examine BMP performance under current and potential future climatic conditions and determine the changes needed in site configuration to address future impacts. We perform modeling for five development types in five different regions of the United States and explore both conventional ("gray") and green infrastructure (GI) stormwater management approaches. If stormwater designs are adapted to address potential future climate conditions, this study suggests that the most cost-effective approaches may use both gray and green BMPs. If the magnitude of extreme weather events increases dramatically, then gray practices that provide detention storage may have better cost-effectiveness. Incorporating risk of future climate impacts into stormwater design may help communities become more resilient. PRACTITIONER POINTS: There is a risk that projected changes in meteorological forcing will negatively affect stormwater BMP performance. Under projected future climate conditions, this study suggests the most cost-effective approaches may use both gray and green BMPs. If the magnitude of extreme weather events increases dramatically, gray practices that provide detention storage may have better cost-effectiveness. Flexibility is beneficial in adaptation and resilience planning due to uncertainty in projected precipitation volume and intensity changes.

Hygrothermal performance of log walls in a building of 18th century and prediction of climate change impact on biological deterioration

Several studies underline the dramatic changes that are expected to take place in nature and environment due to climate change. The latter is also expected to affect the built environment. Particular emphasis is currently given to the impact of climate change on historical structures. Within this context, it is important to use simple methods and novel tools in order to investigate specific case studies. In this study, the climate change impact on the hygrothermal performance of the log walls in a historic timber building is presented. The building under investigation is the Fadum storehouse, also known as ‘the coated house’, located in Tønsberg, Norway. The storehouse dates to the late 18thcentury. It has a particular design with the main features of stumps or piles up to which it stands and the ‘coating’ that covers its outer walls. The main damage of the construction is related to the biological degradation of the wood. The hygrothermal performance of the log walls, as well as the exterior and interior climate, have been monitored and the results have been used to validate a Heat, Air and Moisture transport (HAM) model. The validated HAM model is then used to examine the performance of the log walls for both current and potential future climate conditions. The transient hygrothermal boundary conditions serve as the input parameters to a biohygrothermal model that is used to investigate the biological deterioration of the building components. The findings reveal that currently there is no mould risk for the main body of the construction, which is in accordance with the visual inspection. The passive systems of the building are highly conducive to these results, since they protect it from driving rain and other sources of moisture and eliminate the potential impact of future climate change risk scenarios.

Changing wind speed distributions under future global climate

Based on 12 global circulation models, the simulated changes in empirical 10 m wind speed distributions under the representative concentration pathway RCP8.5 were quantified. It is demonstrated that climate change leads to significant wind speed distribution changes around the world. It is very likely that mean wind speed increases in most parts of Brazil, South Africa and Eastern Australia whereas decreasing mean wind speed is projected for large parts of the USA and Eastern Russia. Changes in the other distribution moments (standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis) are simulated in almost every region of the world. The theoretical distributions Weibull, Kappa, Wakeby and Burr-Generalized Extreme Value were fitted to current and future empirical wind speed distributions. It was found that the simulated changes in distribution moments often lead to changes in the fitting accuracy. This fact highlights the great importance of considering the wind speed distribution as temporally highly variable. Based on these changes, the system of wind speed distributions (including the Burr-Generalized Extreme Value, Kappa and Wakeby distribution) was adapted to potential future climate conditions by optimizing a bagged trees classifier. The use of the system of wind speed distributions ensures a consistent wind speed distribution fitting by selecting the best fitting theoretical distribution under changing climate conditions. The results of this study are a valuable basis for planning future wind energy assessments from both the theoretical and practical perspective.

Disentangling how climate change can affect an aquatic food web by combining multiple experimental approaches.

Predicting the biological effects of climate change presents major challenges due to the interplay of potential biotic and abiotic mechanisms. Climate change can create unexpected outcomes by altering species interactions, and uncertainty over the ability of species to develop in situ tolerance or track environmental change further hampers meaningful predictions. As multiple climatic variables shift in concert, their potential interactions further complicate ecosystem responses. Despite awareness of these complexities, we still lack controlled experiments that manipulate multiple climatic stressors, species interactions, and prior exposure of species to future climatic conditions. Particularly studies that address how changes in water availability interact with other climatic stressors to affect aquatic ecosystems are still rare. Using aquatic insect communities of Neotropical tank bromeliads, we combined controlled manipulations of drought length and species interactions with a space-for-time transplant (lower elevations represent future climate) and a common garden approach. Manipulating drought length and experiment elevation revealed that adverse effects of drought were amplified at the warmer location, highlighting the potential of climatic stressors to synergistically affect communities. Manipulating the presence of omnivorous tipulid larvae showed that negative interactions from tipulids, presumably from predation, arose under drought, and were stronger at the warmer location, stressing the importance of species interactions in mediating community responses to climate change. The common garden treatments revealed that prior community exposure to potential future climatic conditions did not affect the outcome. In this powerful experiment, we demonstrated how complexities arise from the interplay of biotic and abiotic mechanisms of climate change. We stress that single species can steer ecological outcomes, and suggest that focusing on such disproportionately influential species may improve attempts at making meaningful predictions of climate change impacts on food webs.

Future temperature and salinity do not exert selection pressure on cyst germination of a toxic phytoplankton species.

Environmental conditions regulate the germination of phytoplankton resting stages. While some factors lead to synchronous germination, others stimulate germination of only a small fraction of the resting stages. This suggests that habitat filters may act on the germination level and thus affect selection of blooming strains. Benthic “seed banks” of the toxic dinoflagellate Alexandrium ostenfeldii from the Baltic Sea are genetically and phenotypically diverse, indicating a high potential for adaptation by selection on standing genetic variation. Here, we experimentally tested the role of climate‐related salinity and temperature as selection filters during germination and subsequent establishment of A. ostenfeldii strains. A representative resting cyst population was isolated from sediment samples, and germination and reciprocal transplantation experiments were carried out, including four treatments: Average present day germination conditions and three potential future conditions: high temperature, low salinity, and high temperature in combination with low salinity. We found that the final germination success of A. ostenfeldii resting cysts was unaffected by temperature and salinity in the range tested. A high germination success of more than 80% in all treatments indicates that strains are not selected by temperature and salinity during germination, but selection becomes more important shortly after germination, in the vegetative stage of the life cycle. Moreover, strains were not adapted to germination conditions. Instead, highly plastic responses occurred after transplantation and significantly higher growth rates were observed at higher temperature. High variability of strain‐specific responses has probably masked the overall effect of the treatments, highlighting the importance of testing the effect of environmental factors on many strains. It is likely that A. ostenfeldii populations can persist in the future, because suitable strains, which are able to germinate and grow well at potential future climate conditions, are part of the highly diverse cyst population.OPEN RESEARCH BADGES This article has earned an Open Data Badge for making publicly available the digitally‐shareable data necessary to reproduce the reported results. The data is available at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.c8c83nr.

Dynamics of water fluxes and storages in an Alpine karst catchment under current and potential future climate conditions

Abstract. Karst aquifers are difficult to manage due to their unique hydrogeological characteristics. Future climate projections suggest a strong change in temperature and precipitation regimes in European karst regions over the next decades. Alpine karst systems can be especially vulnerable under changing hydro-meteorological conditions since snowmelt in mountainous environments is an important controlling process for aquifer recharge and is highly sensitive to varying climatic conditions. Our paper presents the first study to investigate potential impacts of climate change on mountainous karst systems by using a combined lumped and distributed modeling approach with consideration of subsurface karst drainage structures. The study site is characterized by high-permeability (karstified) limestone formations and low-permeability (non-karst) sedimentary Flysch. The model simulation under current conditions demonstrates that a large proportion of precipitation infiltrates into the karst aquifer as autogenic recharge. Moreover, the result shows that surface snow storage is dominant from November to April, while subsurface water storage in the karst aquifer dominates from May to October. The climate scenario runs demonstrate that varied climate conditions significantly affect the spatiotemporal distribution of water fluxes and storages: (1) the total catchment discharge decreases under all evaluated future climate conditions. (2) The spatiotemporal discharge pattern is strongly controlled by temperature variations, which can shift the seasonal snowmelt pattern, with snow storage in the cold season (December to April) decreasing significantly under all change scenarios. (3) Increased karst aquifer recharge in winter and spring, and decreased recharge in summer and autumn, partly offset each other. (4) Impacts on the karst springs are distinct; the lowest permanent spring presents a “robust” discharge behavior, while the highest overflow outlet is highly sensitive to changing climate. This analysis effectively demonstrates that the impacts on subsurface flow dynamics are regulated by the characteristic dual flow and spatially heterogeneous distributed drainage structure of the karst aquifer. Overall, our study highlights the fast groundwater dynamics in mountainous karst catchments, which make them highly vulnerable to future changing climate conditions. Additionally, this work presents a novel holistic modeling approach, which can be transferred to similar karst systems for studying the impact of climate change on local karst water resources with consideration of their individual hydrogeological complexity and hydraulic heterogeneity.

Canola as a Winter Crop in California

Canola as a Winter Crop in California

Modeling nonbreeding distributions of shorebirds and waterfowl in response to climate change.

To identify areas on the landscape that may contribute to a robust network of conservation areas, we modeled the probabilities of occurrence of several en route migratory shorebirds and wintering waterfowl in the southern Great Plains of North America, including responses to changing climate. We predominantly used data from the eBird citizen‐science project to model probabilities of occurrence relative to land‐use patterns, spatial distribution of wetlands, and climate. We projected models to potential future climate conditions using five representative general circulation models of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5). We used Random Forests to model probabilities of occurrence and compared the time periods 1981–2010 (hindcast) and 2041–2070 (forecast) in “model space.” Projected changes in shorebird probabilities of occurrence varied with species‐specific general distribution pattern, migration distance, and spatial extent. Species using the western and northern portion of the study area exhibited the greatest likelihoods of decline, whereas species with more easterly occurrences, mostly long‐distance migrants, had the greatest projected increases in probability of occurrence. At an ecoregional extent, differences in probabilities of shorebird occurrence ranged from −0.015 to 0.045 when averaged across climate models, with the largest increases occurring early in migration. Spatial shifts are predicted for several shorebird species. Probabilities of occurrence of wintering Mallards and Northern Pintail are predicted to increase by 0.046 and 0.061, respectively, with northward shifts projected for both species. When incorporated into partner land management decision tools, results at ecoregional extents can be used to identify wetland complexes with the greatest potential to support birds in the nonbreeding season under a wide range of future climate scenarios.

Neglected issues in using weather and climate information in ecology and biogeography

Anthropogenic climate change is already impacting ecological systems. Understanding how organisms respond to weather (short‐term) and climate (long‐term) variability, and the population and ecosystem‐wide consequences of climate change, is a research priority. The appropriate use of information on past and potential future weather and climate conditions is crucial for such research, but uncertainties and biases in this information are seldom given full consideration, with important consequences for assessing the potential impacts of climate change on the conservation of biodiversity. Here, we highlight three important neglected issues pertaining to the major applications of weather and climate information in ecological and biogeographical studies. These are as follows: (1) the uncertainty associated with historical weather and climate information; (2) the selection of ensembles of simulated future climate conditions derived from general circulation models (GCM); and (3) the uncertainty and assumptions associated with downscaling GCM simulations to ecologically relevant spatial scales. Broadly, in order to improve the use of weather and climate information in ecological studies, we propose that ecologists must: (1) use weather and climate products that are appropriate for their intended purpose; (2) explore the consequences of uncertainty in these products for ecological conclusions; and (3) seek greater integration of ecological and climate research to create products that reflect both the requirements of ecologists and the limits of climatology. This will enable more effective research into the likely responses of ecological systems to future climate change.

Uncertainty of Climate Change Impacts on Soil Erosion from Cropland in Central Oklahoma

Impacts of climate change on soil erosion and the potential need for additional conservation actions are typically estimated by applying a hydrologic and soil erosion model under present and potential future climate conditions. Projecting future climate conditions harbors several sources of uncertainty that, in turn, lead to uncertainty in projected soil erosion rates. Awareness of these uncertainties is essential to the development of flexible and affordable conservation and adaptation measures that remain effective over the broad range of climate projections. In this study, three climate-associated sources of uncertainties were selected to examine their effect on projected soil erosion for winter-wheat cropland in central Oklahoma. Forty soil erosion distributions representing various combinations of two emission scenarios, ten climate projection models (incl. downscaling), and two storm intensification alternatives were developed and evaluated. The total uncertainty range of 40 projected soil erosion distributions was 2.1 to 18.2 Mg ha&-1 yr&-1 at the median, and 25.0 to 114.0 Mg ha&-1 yr&-1 at the 10% Probability of Exceedance level. For the selected climate change scenarios, climate models, and Oklahoma climate conditions, the uncertainty due to imperfect prediction tools (climate models, downscaling methods) and model choices (storm intensification) was found to be sizably larger than the inherent uncertainty associated with the realization of a future climate outcome (emission scenario). It was concluded that uncertainties in projected soil erosion rates can potentially be large and should be given full consideration in planning future conservation needs.