EGU25-20465, updated on 15 Mar 2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-20465
EGU General Assembly 2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Fine-scale Climate Projections over Minnesota for the 21st Century 
Stefan Liess, Heidi Roop, Tracy Twine, Alejandro Fernandez, Dhondup Dolma, Jack Gorman, Nathan Meyer, Amanda Farris, and Peter Neff
Stefan Liess et al.
  • University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, United States (liess@umn.edu)
Global warming has its largest amplitude in the higher latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere. This is especially the case during winter months when reduced reflectivity from diminished snow cover leads to higher average temperatures. This process has led to warming at twice the rate as the rest of the planet. In addition to accelerated warming from local snow melt, this Arctic warming is contributing to strong warming over Minnesota, especially during winter, when Minnesota is one of the states that is warming the strongest within the contiguous United States. We have previously emphasized this strong warming in our study on high-resolution climate projections over Minnesota with CMIP5, and we are now producing an updated dataset with higher spatial resolution and with input from six CMIP6 global climate models (GCMs), namely BCC-CSM2-MR, CESM2, CMCC-ESM2, CNRM-ESM2-1, IPSL-CM6A-LR, and MIROC-ES2L.

 

We use ensemble climate simulations over Minnesota with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to compute downscaled versions of the comprehensive global climate projections for the 20-year periods 2040-2059, 2060-2079, and 2080-2099. We also perform model integrations over the historical period of 1995-2014 in order to assess any systematic model uncertainties.

These projections build on our previous results at 10-km resolution, but now we use a higher 4-km horizontal resolution over Minnesota nested in a 20-km grid over the contiguous USA and southern Canada with 38 vertical levels in the atmosphere and a sophisticated representation of the many lakes that exist in Minnesota.

Our final results will show a more detailed representation of the ongoing warming for individual counties in Minnesota in all seasons, especially in winter. We expect conditions near the end of the 21st century that are significantly different from current climate. Our results will influence regional decision-making related to agriculture, infrastructure, water resources, and other sectors.

How to cite: Liess, S., Roop, H., Twine, T., Fernandez, A., Dolma, D., Gorman, J., Meyer, N., Farris, A., and Neff, P.: Fine-scale Climate Projections over Minnesota for the 21st Century , EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-20465, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-20465, 2025.