Using Downscaled Climate Model Output to Examine Climate Change in North Carolina

Climate change is a pressing issue people in North Carolina are already facing, and recent decades in North Carolina have exhibited a warming trend at the higher end of projected values. Due to North Carolina’s diverse geography, climate is expected to change differently across the state. This geography can be broken down into three distinct regions: the Mountains, Piedmont, and Coastal Plain. We used downscaled climate model output to examine climate change in the largest population centers (Asheville, Charlotte, and Wilmington) in each of these regions to examine how climate change is projected to affect these places in the future for a representative month in the winter and summer. We examine how maximum temperature, minimum temperature, specific humidity, and precipitation change between the present and the end of the 21st Century using downscaled output from the 20 climate models in the Multivariate Adaptive Constructed Analogs (MACA) downscaling project. Climate is expected to warm and become more humid in North Carolina in Summer and Winter with wide variability in precipitation across the state, noting that the variability is only evident by considering output from multiple climate models. By examining North Carolina climate change at such a tangible level, this study intends to inform and equip decision makers as we prepare North Carolina and the distinct geographical regions for its future.