Assessing Climate Change

To construct a compete picture of how climate is likely to change in your region, it is important to know about:

Climate Change — long term trends or major shifts that happen over centuries;
Past Climate Change — historic climate trends and patterns in your region
Climate Variability — short-term rises and falls (from years to a decade) within the trend line (such as El Nino Southern Oscillation) and medium term oscillations over multiple decadal changes in regional climates (such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation); and
Future Climate Change is projected by sophisticated global and regional computer models. These models take into account atmosphere, land surface and ocean physical processes to project changes in variables, such as temperature and precipitation.