C3 Monthly Call-in and Webinar Meeting

Title/Presenter: Changes in Winter Precipitation Extremes for the Western U.S. (w/ a Focus on the Northwest), Dr. Francina Dominguez, University of Arizona

Description: Dr. Dominguez and colleagues recently published findings showing consistent and statistically significant increases in the intensity of future extreme winter precipitation events over the western United States, as simulated by an ensemble of regional climate models (RCMs) driven by IPCC AR4 global climate models (GCMs).

All eight simulations analyzed in this work consistently show an increase in the intensity of extreme winter precipitation with the multi-model mean projecting an area-averaged 12.6% increase in 20-year return period and 14.4% increase in 50-year return period daily precipitation.

In contrast with extreme precipitation, the multi-model ensemble shows a modest decrease in mean winter precipitation of approximately 2.9% in the southeastern part of the domain and a 3.6% increase in the northeastern part of the domain.

About the Presenter: Francina Dominguez an Assistant Professor, Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Arizona. She is a hydroclimatologist working on future climate change in the Western United States and how it will impact the hydrology of the region. She also has a great interest in land-atmosphere interactions, particularly the contribution of local evapotranspiration to precipitation within a region. While her work has mostly relied on numerical modeling, one of her current projects uses water vapor isotopes to study the partitioning between evaporation and transpiration in different ecologic systems. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Master of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.