Characterizing Uncertainty in Changing Precipitation Regimes for Ecological and Hydrological Applicaitons in the Southeast and the Caribbean US.

Duration

March 2017 - August 2021

Narrative

We propose to comprehensively evaluate questions of risk, vulnerability, and uncertainty as it relates to changing precipitation regimes in the Southeast US and US Caribbean region. We will build on prior work that developed a novel approach for engagement and knowledge co-production with Landscape Conservation Cooperatives as it relates to assessing relevance of climate change projections for management and applied research. Furthermore we propose to expand on past work that began to evaluate the sources of uncertainty in ultra-high resolution Regional Climate Models (RCMs) as it relates to precipitation changes as well as characterizations of uncertainty in both statistical and dynamical downscaling approaches. These methods will be expanded to include the entirety of the Southeastern U.S.. Using established methods and existing datasets, we will conduct a preliminary investigation into the potential changes in precipitation intensity-duration-frequency that could be used to inform decision makers as they develop adaptation strategies and plans in response to future climate change. Finally, a framework for distilling these results to stakeholders will be developed and leveraged against existing decision support tools that have been developed at NC State University.