27th Annual Meeting and Symposium of the
Desert Tortoise Council, March 22-24, 2002
Abstracts

Recent Projections of Climate Change for the Desert Southwest, 1900-2100

Michael Dettinger, Daniel Cayan, and Mary Meyer
U.S. Geological Survey, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA

Recent historical global climate simulations by the Parallel Climate Model (PCM), made as part of the Department of Energy's Accelerated Climate Prediction Initiative, are part of a new generation of coupled ocean-atmosphere climate-change projections that have been shown to reflect historical climate and ocean changes with reassuring fidelity. Historical-period and future climate-changes for the Desert Southwest projected by PCM will be presented. Projections of changes in extreme temperatures, frequency of large and small precipitation events, monsoons, and soil moisture will be discussed and, where possible, will be related to projected changes in Pacific climate variations like El Nino and Pacific decadal climate regimes.