Use of Heat and Fire-Risk Indices to Project Local Climate Impacts on Selected Army Installations: Climate Models, Scenarios, Climate Data, and Indices
Abstract
Climate change is expected to produce increasing impacts on training and infrastructure on Army installations in the coming decades. Planning to enable Army installations to adapt to the changing climate can be supported by suitable estimates of climate impacts over timeframes suitable for strategic plans. This work computed the impacts of future climate change on available training days for seven sample Army installations using projections of temperature and precipitation from global climate models. The number of days with heat-related training restrictions and fire risk from live-fire training were calculated using observed weather station data and climate model projections for several future climate scenarios. For these installations, increased temperatures in time periods centered on 2030, 2050, and 2090 result in a greater number of days with heat categories above 84 and 90 F (28.9 and 32.2 C) and with high fire risk. The climate impact on heat-affected training days is greater in the U.S. Southeast, where high humidity also contributes most to the heat index. The impact on the fire risk for training is greater in the U.S. Southwest, where the low precipitation and high temperatures contribute to the high drought index. Future work will include additional installations and climate variables.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 27, 2017
- Accession Number
- AD1064181
Entities
People
- John W. Weatherly
- Mattson A. Rosenbaum
Organizations
- Engineer Research and Development Center