PNNL

Abstract

Regional climate of the western U.S. shows clear footprints of interactions between atmospheric circulation and orography. The unique features of the diverse climate regimes challenge climate modeling. These papers provide detailed analyses of observations and regional climate simulations to improve our understanding and modeling of regional climate of the region. In Part I, regional climate features examined include seasonal statistics, relationships between precipitation and surface temperature, and precipitation and elevation, model sensitivity to spatial resolutions.