I have always had a great interest in the environment. Extreme weather, storm systems, hurricanes and climate change are only a few of my interests within the subject. Therefore, meteorology was a subject that caught my interest and what I choose to study at the University.
As a matter of fact, climate change is more ongoing now, than it has ever been. There are several things that can be done to prevent climate change, but it requires work done by governments and countries all over the world. Climate impact occurs in so many ways. For instance, emissions of the commonly named Greenhouse gases from traffic and industries due to combustion of fossil fuels. The emission of Greenhouse gases contribute to an increase in global average temperature.
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I want to see if the model predicts more snow or more rain, than we have today. There is a belief that nowadays it is raining more instead of snowing, compared to past data. I want to investigate if we can tell this by looking at the model data. I want to examine how common Atmospheric Rivers are and how we can see them on a satellite picture. I also want to find out if Atmospheric Rivers will become more common if we will have a higher global average temperature. I want to know, to what extent, Atmospheric Rivers might affect the precipitation patterns in the …show more content…
RCP means Representative Concentrations Pathways. It is the trajectories of four possible Greenhouse gas concentrations. Those are called RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5. I will be working with future model data based on the RCP8.5 in my project. In short, it is the worst case scenario among these four. These trajectories are commonly used for research and modeling. The four RCPs are four scenarios based on the amount of Greenhouse gases emitted. In the end of this century, we might have reached the RCP8.5, but hopefully not. It is a scenario with a large increase in rainfall and significantly higher temperatures than today, only to mention some of the negative effects. With restrictions of emissions and various actions, we might be able to slow down the negative trend.
A goal with the project is to look at how the precipitation rate is predicted to evolve during the rest of this decade, if there will be a scenario close the the RCP4,5 or the RCP8.5. There is no doubt regarding the fact that we will have an increase in temperature in the future, the temperature already increased markedly since before the industrial