FOREST RESPONSE TO CLIMATIC-CHANGE - EFFECTS OF PARAMETER-ESTIMATION AND CHOICE OF WEATHER PATTERNS ON THE RELIABILITY OF PROJECTIONS

Computer projections suggest that forests may respond dramatically and rapidly to global warming, with significant and readily observable changes in forests of mid-latitudes occurring by the turn of the century or shortly thereafter. These results raise the question: how reliable are the projections? Sensitivity analyses reported in this paper suggest that projections of forest response to global warming will be generally insensitive to errors of 10% in parameter estimation. Even where projections are sensitive quantitatively, they are not change in timing. Projections are insensitive to the choice of baseline weather records, unless the warmest or coldest decades of the 20th century are used as baselines.