Precipitation Change by 2050 by Terrestrial Ecoregion

This map shows the precipitation change in millimeters projected to occur by the midcentury (2050s) based on a median ensemble analysis of 16 General Circulation Models (GCM) downscaled to a 0.5 degree resolution (Maurer, 2009).  Half of the models project a greater amount of change, and half of the models project less change as compared to the 1961-1990 baseline average.  We used output from each GCM runs of the A1B greenhouse gas emissions scenarios (Nakicenovic, 2000).  All projections were generated for the World Climate Research Programme’s (WCRP’s) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 (CMIP3) multi-model dataset (Meehl, 2007) and used for analyses included in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC, 2007).  These data were derived by The Nature Conservancy, and were displayed in a map published in The Atlas of Global Conservation (Hoekstra et al., University of California Press, 2010). More information at http://nature.org/atlas. Terrestrial ecoregion source: Olson, D.M., E. Dinerstein, E.D. Wikramanayake, N.D. Burgess, G.V.N. Powell, E.C. Underwood, J.A. D'Amico, I. Itoua, H.E. Strand, J.C. Morrison, C.J. Loucks, T.F. Allnutt, T.H. Ricketts, Y. Kura, J.F. Lamoreux, W.W. Wettengel, P. Hedao, and K.R. Kassem. 2001. Terrestrial ecoregions of the world: New map of life on earth. Bioscience 51(11):933-938.
Climate data sources: Maurer EP, Adam JC, Wood AW (2009) Climate model based consensus on the hydrologic impacts of climate change to the Rio Lempa basin of Central America. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 13: 183–194. Nakicenovic N, Alcamo J, Davis G, de Vries D, Fenhann J, et al. (2000) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. A Special Report of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, editor. Cambridge, UK.: Cambridge University Press. Meehl GA, Covey C, Delworth T, Latif M, McAvaney B, et al. (2007) The WCRP CMIP3 multimodel dataset - A new era in climate change research. Bull Amer Meteorol Soc 88: 1383–1394. IPCC (2007) Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In: Solomon S, Qin D, Manning M, Chen Z, Marquis M et al., eds. Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.: Cambridge University Press. 996 p.