Climate Change in the Los Angeles Region: Temperature and Precipitation

The goal of this project was to examine how temperature and precipitation could change by the mid 21st century over the greater Los Angeles region. Major findings for temperature are: (1) large variability in the magnitude exists among downscaled global climate model projections over LA, but all predict warming; (2) warming is smaller over the ocean and coastal zone, but larger in the mountain areas and inland; (3) ensemble mean warming in all parts of the domain is significantly outside the range of historical variability, meaning the change will be detectable. Major findings for precipitation are: (1) large variability in both sign and magnitude exists among downscaled global climate model precipitation projections over LA; (2) the model-averaged change in precipitation is approximately zero; (3) the uncertainty in (1) is within the range of current (1981- 2000) levels of interannual precipitation variability.