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Modeling Future Temperature and Precipitation for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Caribbean

Project Information

Project Completion: September 2016. This project has been completed.
Principal Investigators:
Ryan Boyles, USGS Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center,
Adam Terando, USGS Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center
Jaime Collazo, USGS NC Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit
Jared Bowden, UNC Institute for the Environment
William Gould, USDA Forest Service International Institute of Tropical Forestry
Vasu Misra, Florida State University
Implements Science Theme: 
1: Develop climate projections and determine appropriate projections to use for resource management
4: Ecological research and modeling

Key Points

  • Increased understanding of climate impacts on the Caribbean, which has historically been understudied
  • Applied GCM downscaling methods to take into account island topography and localized climate features
  • Determined predicted temperature and precipitation changes for Puerto Rico and USVI by mid-century

Overview

While temperatures are projected to increase in the Caribbean, this isn’t the only major climate impact on the region. Changes in atmospheric moisture patterns will have a major impact on ecosystems and water resources. Considering  the region’s varying topography and climate features is important for accurate data when using precipitation models. But, there is no island-scale climate model information for the Caribbean. This limits the development of strong adaptation strategies. 

The goal of this project was to develop these island-scale climate projections. This project began by engaging Caribbean ecologists, hydrologists, and conservation biologists Together, we determined the most valuable types of information. Our final product provides climate models at a 2km resolution. We used a process called downscaling to make these models accurate. We based our results on three global and two regional climate models for a scenario with high greenhouse gas emissions. 

Our results suggest that for Puerto Rico, annual temperature would increase between 1°C and 1.3°C by mid-century. The interior part of the island will likely see higher temperature increases. Precipitation totals decrease for much of the island, with an average decline between 12% and 19%. The models found some localized decreases could be greater than 30%. The projected changes for the USVI are dominated by the surrounding ocean environment. Stakeholders including USGS and the Caribbean Landscape Conservation Cooperative can use these projections to inform their work.

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