With warming predicted, new center at UMass to study climate change

By David Abel, Globe Staff

The federal government today awarded the University of Massachusetts at Amherst a multimillion-dollar grant to host one of eight centers around the country to study the local effects of climate change.

The Northeast Climate Science Center will study how climate change affects ecosystems, wildlife, water, and other resources from the Great Lakes to Maine and down to Missouri. The $7.5 million grant over five years will sponsor research at UMass-Amherst as well as at institutions in Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, and Massachusetts.

“The nationwide network of Climate Science Centers will provide the scientific talent and commitment necessary for understanding how climate change and other landscape stressors will change the face of the United States,” said US Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar in a statement.

Last month, the state’s Climate Change Adaptation Advisory Committee released a report that suggested temperatures in Massachusetts by end of this century could spike to 90 degrees or more for 30 to 60 days every summer, ocean temperatures could be on average 8 degrees warmer, and winters are likely to have more rain and less snow.

And next month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release a major new study on the effects of climate change in recent years and what the latest evidence shows is likely to happen in coming decades.

UMass-Amherst and its partners will study climate impacts on water resources, agriculture and grazing, fish and wildlife, forest resilience, invasive species, protecting migratory fish and waterfowl, sea-level rise, coastal erosion, flood management, and water quality.

“Most studies so far provide broad-scale assessments at the national level,” said Raymond Bradley, a university professor who will serve as one of the new center’s principal investigators. “Resource managers need more detailed information that is relevant to their specific problems. One of our goals for the new center is to develop this capability.”

In addition to UMass Amherst, the money will support research at the University of Wisconsin, University of Missouri, University of Minnesota, Columbia University, the College of the Menominee Nation in Keshena, Wis., and the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.

The eight regional climate science centers extend from a hub at the National Climate Change and Wildlife Center at the US Geological Survey national headquarters. Other centers focus on research in Alaska, the Southeast, Northwest, Southwest, North Central, South Central, and the Pacific Islands.

“This is a great opportunity for scientists with different backgrounds to talk with a common vocabulary about these very important national problems,” said Richard Palmer, chairman of the civil and environmental engineering department at UMass-Amherst, who will also serve as a principal investigator at the new center.

A list of the eight regional Climate Science Centers follows:

•The Alaska Climate Science Center is hosted by the University of Alaska-Fairbanks in Anchorage.

•The Southeast Climate Science Center is hosted by North Carolina State University

•The Northwest Climate Science Center is supported by a consortium of three universities--Oregon State University, University of Washington and the University of Idaho.

•The Southwest Climate Science Center has six host organizations: University of Arizona, Tucson; University of California, Davis; University of California, Los Angeles; Desert Research Institute, Reno; University of Colorado, Boulder ; and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego.

•The North Central Climate Science Center is headed by Colorado State University and includes the University of Colorado, Colorado School of Mines, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Wyoming, Montana State University, University of Montana, Kansas State University, and Iowa State University.

•The Northeast Climate Science Center will be hosted by the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, with the College of Menominee Nation, Columbia University, Marine Biological Laboratory, University of Minnesota, University of Missouri-Columbia, and University of Wisconsin-Madison serving as consortium partners.

•The South Central Climate Science Center will be hosted by the University of Oklahoma, with Texas Tech University, Louisiana State University, The Chickasaw Nation, The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, and NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory serve as consortium partners.

•The Pacific Islands Climate Science Center will be hosted by the University of Hawaii - Manoa in Honolulu, with the University of Hawaii-Hilo and the University of Guam as consortium partners.