Over the twenty-first century, the frequency of extreme-heat events for major cities in heavily air conditioned California is projected to increase rapidly. Extreme heat is defined here as the temperature threshold for the 90th-percentile excedence probability (T90) of the local warmest summer days under the current climate. Climate projections from three atmosphere–ocean general circulation models, with a range of low to midhigh temperature sensitivity forced by the Special Report on Emission Scenarios higher, middle, and lower emission scenarios, indicate that these increases in temperature extremes and variance are projected to exceed the rate of increase in mean temperature. Overall, projected increases in extreme heat under the higher A1fi emission scenario by 2070–99 tend to be 20%–30% higher than those projected under the lower B1 emission scenario. Increases range from approximately 2 times the present-day number of days for inland California cities (e.g., Sacramento and Fresno), up to 4 times for previously temperate coastal cities (e.g., Los Angeles and San Diego), implying that present-day “heat wave” conditions may dominate summer months—and patterns of electricity demand—in the future. When the projected extreme heat and observed relationships between high temperature and electricity demand for California are mapped onto current availability, maintaining technology and population constant for demand-side calculations, a potential for electricity deficits as high as 17% during T90 peak electricity demand periods is found. Similar increases in extreme-heat days are likely for other southwestern U.S. urban locations, as well as for large cities in developing nations with rapidly increasing electricity demands. In light of the electricity response to recent extreme-heat events, such as the July 2006 heat waves in California, Missouri, and New York, these results suggest that future increases in peak electricity demand will challenge current transmission and supply methods as well as future planned supply capacities when population and income growth are taken into account.

Two simulations, control and land use change, were performed for an eight week period (2 April–16 May 1990) to determine the net sensitivity of the local climate around the Three Gorges Dam. The analysis indicates that the large reservoir acts as a potential evaporating surface that decreases the surface temperature, cools the lower atmosphere, decreasing upward motion, and increasing sinking air mass. Such sinking results in low level moisture divergence, decreasing cloudiness, and increasing net downward radiation, which increases the surface temperature. However, results indicate that evaporative cooling dominates radiative warming in this initial study. The strong evaporation also supplies moisture to the atmosphere, suggesting an increase in precipitation, but the sinking moist air diverges away from the TGD region with no net change in precipitation. This numerical study represents an initial methodology for quantification of the impact of the Three Gorges Dam on the local climate and a more comprehensive, fine‐scale set of multi‐season simulations with additional observational data is needed for a more complete analysis.

Precipitation and river flow during a January 1995 flood event over the Russian River watershed in the northern Coastal Range of California were simulated using the University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Coupled Atmosphere-River Flow Simulation (CARS) System. The CARS System undirectionally links a primitive equation atmospheric mesoscale model to a physically based, fully distributed hydrologic model by employing an automated land analysis system. Using twice-daily National Meteorological Center eta model initial data to provide the large-scale forcing to the mesoscale model, the CARS System has closely simulated the observed river flow during the flooding stage, where the simulated river flow was within 10% of the observed river flow at the Hopland gauge station on the Russian River.