Very High Resolution Climate Projections for the Islands of O‘ahu and Kaua‘i

Principal Investigator

Yuqing Wang

Start Date

2013-08-31

End Date

2015-09-16

Release Date

2013

Throughout the State of Hawai`i, there is widespread public and official concern about the impacts of anticipated anthropogenic climate change over the coming decades. Such a concern is present globally, but the Hawaiian Islands have special issues in terms of vulnerability of their small, geographically isolated watersheds and ecosystems. The Hawaiian Islands are notable in that they have received considerably less attention from the climate modeling community than most other populated areas of the world. Due to their small dimensions and steep topography, the Hawaiian Islands are poorly resolved in current state-of-the-art global models used for long-term climate simulations. This project will apply a very fine-resolution regional model to downscale global model results to provide the best possible representations of recent past climate and projections of future climate. These simulations will include the key variables needed for land management decisions including rainfall, surface sensible heat fluxes and evaporation, radiative fluxes, wind, and temperature at small horizontal scales for Islands of Oahu and Hawai`i. The complete high-resolution simulations, as well as specialized products such as projected flooding and drought climatologies, will be provided via a web portal to any interested parties.

ScienceBase WMS

• National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers
• Pacific Islands CASC