On 13 May 2008, Prof. Brayn Weare from Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, University of California at Davis, Visited NCC and delivered a presentation on “Regional modeling of climate change for California”.
Prof. Weare firstly introduced some observation of climate change in 20th century in west of USA, especially in California. The climate factors such as temperature and precipitation, all have significant variations and yet have considerable uncertainty. It is mainly because of the special geophysical position of California, which is located in the transitional region between subtropical dry climate and temperate zone humid climate. The snowfall in the western mountains of USA played a very important role in water balance and use of water resources in the region. The mountain snow played a role in adjustment of water in reservoir. The snow in winter made the plenty of precipitation deposited, reducing the river runoff and accordingly reducing the danger of flooding. While the snow melt in spring, the runoff was increased in dry season, which ensure the demand for water resources in human activities. If river runoff was accumulated from dry season to July, the date of reaching half of the annual total runoff may be a meaningful parameter. The research indicated that, the parameter had an obvious forward tendency in recent 50 years, as many as 15 days.
Secondly, Prof. Weare made a comprehensive introduction on some results of prediction on future climate change in California. Under the scenarios of future climate change, no matter water resources, forest fire, fruits planting, or degree of air pollution, will present large variation. Prof. Weare widely used regional climate model MM5 and WRF in his research. Besides prediction under global warming scenarios, he made thorough research on human activities, especially on impact of crop irrigation on regional climate.
At last, Prof. Weare specially introduced some latest research results of his team on regional climate change in China by using numerical models, especially the impact of aerosol on land surface temperature. Prof. Weare expressed great interest in advances of Chinese scientists and would be willing to cooperate with Chinese colleagues. The seminar was chaired by Prof. Zhaoxin Li.