How will climate change affect weather patterns and lake levels in the Great Lakes region?
Evaluating changes in synoptic patterns is tantamount to understanding regional climate change. To date, the synoptic evaluations that have been done regarding climate change output from General Circulation Models have been restricted mainly to examining changes in storm tracks across large areas (e.g., the Atlantic Ocean). In this presentation, we looked at output from the Canadian Coupled Climate Model (CGCM1) and the Hadley Coupled Climate Model (HadCM2), which were used as part of the U.S. National Assessment of Climate Change. We examined potential changes, relative to present conditions, in synoptic patterns, as well as changes in temperature, precipitation, and lake levels over the Great Lakes region toward the end of the 21st century. Both models show a decrease in the number of extremely cold days, an increase in the number of extremely hot days, and an increase in precipitation for the future particularly for heavy precipitation (e.g., 12.5 mm) events. Both models show a decr