Abstract
Minnesota is the U.S. state with the strongest winter warming in the
contiguous United States. We performed regional climate projections at
10 km horizontal resolution using the WRF model forced by an ensemble of
eight CMIP5 GCMs. The selected GCMs have previously been found to be in
relatively good agreement with observations compared to other members of
the CMIP5 model ensemble. Our projections suggest ongoing warming in all
seasons, especially in winter, as well as shallower snow cover and fewer
days with snow cover. On the other hand, we expect significant increases
in spring and early summer heavy precipitation events. Our comparisons
between different time slices and two different emission scenarios
indicate a climate for the state of Minnesota at the end of the 21st
century that is significantly different from what has been observed by
the end of the 20th century. Winters and summers are expected to be up
to 6oC and 4oC warmer, respectively,
over northern and central Minnesota and spring precipitation may
increase by more than 1 mm d-1 over northern
Minnesota. Especially over the central part of the state, winter snow
height is suggested to decrease by more than 0.5 meters and the number
of days per year with snow height of more than 0.0254 meters (one inch)
is expected to decrease by up to 60.