Effects of Climate Change on Precipitation and the Maximum Daily Temperature (Tmax) at Two US Military Bases with Different Present-Day Climates.

In this study, the effects of climate change on precipitation and the maximum daily temperature (T_max) at two USA locations that have different climates—the Travis Airforce Base (AFB) in California [38.27° N, 121.93° W] and Fort Bragg (FBR) in North Carolina [35.14 N, 79.00 W]—are analyzed. The effects of climate change on central tendency, tail distributions, and both auto- and cross-covariance structures in precipitation and T_max fields for three time periods in the 21st century centered on the years 2020, 2050, and 2100 were analyzed. It was found that, on average, T_max under the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 emission scenario is projected to increase for the years 2020, 2050, and 2100 by 1.1, 2.0, and 2.2 °C, respectively, for AFB, and 0.9, 1.2, and 1.6 °C, respectively, for FBR, while under the RCP8.5 emission scenario T_max will increase by 1.1, 1.9, and 2.7 °C, respectively, for AFB, and 0.1, 1.5, and 2.2 °C, respectively, for FBR. The climate change signal in precipitation is weak. The results show that, under different emission scenarios, events considered to be within 1% of the most extreme events in the past will become ~13–30 times more frequent for T_max, ~and 0.05–3 times more frequent for precipitation in both locations. Several analytical methods were deployed in a sequence, creating an easily scalable framework for similar analyses in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]