Weather and Climate Inventory, Klamath Network, National Park Service, 2007
5.0. Conclusions and Recommendations
5.3. Climate Change Detection
There is much interest in the adaptation of KLMN ecosystems in response to possible future climate change. In particular, for interior park units, there are concerns about snowpack trends in response to climate changes, while at REDW, there are concerns about changes in ocean levels and temperatures, along with changes in fog patterns (Odion et al. 2005). The KLMN region is strongly affected by ENSO cycles. Future climate changes could affect the frequency, intensity, and duration of ENSO events in the area, which would in turn impact KLMN ecosystems.
The desire for credible, accurate, complete, and long-term climate records—from any location—cannot be overemphasized. Thus, this consideration always should have a high priority. However, because of spatial diversity in climate, monitoring that fills knowledge gaps and provides information on long-term temporal variability in short-distance relationships also will be valuable. We cannot be sure that climate variability and climate change will affect all parts of a given park unit equally. In fact, it is appropriate to speculate that this is not the case, and spatial variations in temporal variability extend to small spatial scales, a consequence of diversity within KLMN in both topography and in land use patterns.
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