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Stephen Vavrus

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The Midwest has experienced some of the costliest flooding events in U.S. history, including many billions of dollars during the past decade alone. The Midwest’s susceptibility to flooding has been exacerbated by a long-term increase in total precipitation and extreme rainfalls, with the 2010s being the region’s wettest decade on record Climate models strongly indicate that these recent trends will continue, such that the warming Midwest will experience wetter winters and springs, shortened snow seasons, and extreme year-round precipitation in the future. Despite this high level of confidence in climate trends, there is limited knowledge of how these will translate to flood likelihood and the associated societal...
Abstract (from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0167506): Projected changes in the relative abundance and timing of autumn-winter migration are assessed for seven dabbling duck species across the Mississippi and Atlantic Flyways for the mid- and late 21st century. Species-specific observed relationships are established between cumulative weather severity in autumn-winter and duck population rate of change. Dynamically downscaled projections of weather severity are developed using a high-resolution regional climate model, interactively coupled to a one-dimensional lake model to represent the Great Lakes and associated lake-effect snowfall. Based on the observed relationships and downscaled...
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