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Needs for Additional Research on Climate Change and Extreme Weather-Related Events

To project climate change and variability at a regional scale, increased spatial resolution in long-term climate change scenarios is needed. Precipitation predictions for the South are particularly problematic; different climate scenarios simulate large differences in precipitation pattern changes over the next century. A recent report on climate change in the gulf coast region of the South points out that the CGCM1 climate change scenario differs from the HadCM2Sul in its projections of changes in runoff (increase), soil moisture (decrease), and subregional precipitation patterns (significant overall decrease) (Twilley and others 2001). Both scenarios, however, agree that more intense rainfall will occur across the region. The uncertainty resulting from different climate change projections means that regional assessment developers and users should consider a wide range of potential futures.

There is a limited understanding of climate change impacts on extreme weather events. Multiple stressors and their regional-scale integrated effects are critical areas for future research. As these phenomena are measured and understood, broad-scale forest ecosystem monitoring programs should be implemented to provide continuous, current information on forest conditions and to allow for the validation of modeling results.

In field chamber experiments, coexposure to increased CO₂ and O₃ has been shown to offset predicted gains in forest growth from elevated CO₂ and to increase damage from O₃. More research is needed to consider the combined effect of these gases (McLaughlin and Percy 1999).