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.
Other pages in this section
- 01 Weather and Climate Cover
- Final 2001 Air Emissions Inventory, Crater Lake National Park, Oregon, PDF, October 2003
- 02 Acronyms
- Final Report: Status of Air Quality and Effects of Atmospheric Pollutants on Ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest PDF 1994
- 03 Executive Summary
- Crater Lake National Park Air Quality Information Overview
- 04 Acknowledgements
- 05 1.0. Introduction
- 06 1.1. Network Terminology
- 07 1.2. Weather versus Climate Definitions
- 08 1.3. Purpose of Measurements
- 09 1.4. Design of Climate-Monitoring Programs
- 10 2.0. Climate Background
- 11 2.1. Climate and the KLMN Environment
- 12 2.2. Spatial Variability
- 13 2.3. Temporal Variability
- 14 2.4. Parameter Regression on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM)
- 15 3.0. Methods
- 16 3.1. Metadata Retrieval
- 17 3.2. Criteria for Locating Stations
- 18 4.0. Station Inventory
- 19 4.1. Climate and Weather Networks
- 20 4.2. Station Locations
- 21 5.0. Conclusions and Recommendations
- 22 5.1. Klamath Inventory and Monitoring Network
- 23 5.2. Spatial Variations in Mean Climate
- 25 5.4. Aesthetics
- 26 5.5. Information Access
- 27 5.6. Summarized Conclusions and Recommendations
- 28 6.0 Literature Cited
- 29 Appendix A. Glossary
- 30 Appendix B. Climate-monitoring principles
- 31 Appendix C. Factors in operating a weather/climate network
- 32 Appendix D. General design considerations for weather/climate-monitoring programs
- 33 Appendix E. Master metadata field list
- 34 Appendix F. Electronic supplements
- 35 Appendix G. Descriptions of weather/climate monitoring networks
