Abstract
There are large uncertainties in our future projections of climate
change at the regional scale, with spatial variabilities not resolved
adequately by coarse-grained Earth System Models (ESMs). In this study,
we use pseudo global warming simulations driven by end of the century
upper end RCP (Representative Concentration Pathway) 8.5 projections
from 11 state-of-the-art ESMs to examine changes in summer heat stress
extremes using physiologically relevant heat stress metrics (heat index
and wet bulb globe temperature) over the Great Lakes Region (GLR). These
simulations, generated from a cloud-resolving model, are at a fine
spatiotemporal resolution to detect heterogeneities relevant for human
heat exposure. These downscaled climate projections are combined with
gridded future population estimates to isolate population versus warming
contributions to population-adjusted heat stress in this region. Our
results show that a significant portion of summer will be dominated by
critical outdoor heat stress levels within GLR for this scenario.
Additionally, regions with higher heat stress generally have
disproportionately higher population densities. Humidity change
generates positive feedback on future heat stress, generally amplifying
heat stress (by 24.2% to 79.5%) compared to changing air temperature
alone, with the degree of control of humidity depending on the heat
stress metric used. The uncertainty of the results for future heat
stress are quantified based on multiple ESMs and heat stress metrics
used in this study. Overall, our study shows the importance of
dynamically resolving heat stress at population-relevant scales to get
more accurate estimates of future heat risk in the region.