Overview:

 

This site is intended to provide a review of Chapter 14 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Working Group I (WGI).  It was developed for an assignment for a course at University of Colorado Boulder (ATOC7500: IPCC Review). Chapter 14 consists of 92 pages and 46 figures with contributions from 17 lead authors and 78 contributing authors.  This chapter assesses the current scientific literature on projected changes in major climate phenomena, particularly their relevance for future change in regional climates. This website provides a summary of the key aspects and findings of Chapter 14, a critical assessment of the chapter, a section highlighting the policy and societal relevance of the chapter, several frequently asked questions related to the material, a glossary of important terms used in the chapter, and links to useful resources.  Links to these sections can be found above.  Unless otherwise noted, all figures and figure captions are directly from the IPCC chapter.  

 

Key Results:

 

• Future regional climate change can be assessed in the context of large-scale climate phenomena, such as monsoons and tropical convergence zones, major modes of climate variability (e.g., ENSO), and tropical/extratropical cyclones. 

 

• The global monsoon is likely to increase in area and intensity in the 21st century.  Increases in precipitation change extremes are very likely in South America, Africa, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australia.

 

• There is medium confidence that annual precipitation change will follow a ‘warmer-get-wetter’ pattern, increasing where warming of sea surface temperature exceeds the tropical mean.

 

• There is high confidence that El Niño-Southern Oscilla­tion (ENSO) will continue to be the dominant mode of interannual variability in the future.  Due to increased moisture availability in a warmer climate, precipitation variability on regional scales will likely intensify.

 

• The frequency of tropical cyclones worldwide will likely either decrease or stay the same, but it is likely that mean wind speed and precipitation for will increase for tropical cyclones.

 

• The Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) is unlikely to change significantly in the future as the climate changes, as evidenced by paleo reconstructions and model simulations.

 

*italicized words are terms that correspond to the assessed likelihood of an outcome or result and/or confidence in the available evidence according to the IPCC (see Section 1.4 in IPCC)