Julie Ann Winkler

• PhD
• Professor at Michigan State University

Changes in precipitation can have broad and significant societal impacts. A number of previous studies that analyzed changes in precipitation across the Great Lakes and Midwest for a variety of time periods and using a range of quality-control standards and methods observed increased precipitation rates and totals, although there was considerable s...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03479-2.

Globally, the number and extent of terrestrial protected areas (PAs) are expanding rapidly. Nonetheless, their impacts on preventing forest loss and the factors influencing the impacts are not well understood, despite the critical roles of forests in biodiversity conservation, provision of ecosystem services, and achievement of the United Nations’...

The use of a charismatic umbrella species as surrogate for sympatric species is often advocated as an efficient approach. However, comprehensive evaluations from a spatio-temporal perspective are few, leaving the long-term effectiveness of such practices remain uncertain. We modeled the habitat change for giant panda and eight sympatric mammalian s...

Daily solar radiation is a critical input for estimating plant growth and development, yet this variable is infrequently measured compared to other climate variables. This study evaluates the sensitivity of simulated maize and soybean production from the CERES-Maize and CROPGRO-Soybean modules of the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Trans...

The persistence of high values of relative humidity for several hours to a few days has wide‐ranging implications for natural and human systems. Among its many impacts, persistent high relative humidity contributes to reduced atmospheric visibility, fog frequency and duration, road and powerline icing, the occurrence of foliar plant disease and the...

Synergies and tradeoffs among the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within specific locations have been widely studied. However, there is little understanding of SDG synergies and tradeoffs across spatial/administrative boundaries although the world is increasingly interconnected and the United Nations aims to achieve SDGs everywh...

Outputs of species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used as indicators of climate conditions favorable for species occurrence. When using these outputs to inform planning and decision making, it is essential that the uncertainties associated with the projections of present-day and future climatic suitability are carefully considered. Climate c...

Physical geography is a process, conducted by people, of integration and synthesis of ideas and observations to advance scientific understanding of Earth’s surface and atmosphere and to apply this knowledge to the greater good of the planet and its people. Therefore, physical geography matters; that is, physical geography makes a difference to peop...

To address global challenges1–4, 193 countries have committed to the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)5. Quantifying progress towards achieving the SDGs is essential to track global efforts towards sustainable development and guide policy development and implementation. However, systematic methods for assessing spatio-temporal...

Research has shown that varying spatial scale through the selection of the total extent of investigation and the grain size of environmental predictor variables has effects on species distribution model (SDM) results and accuracy, but there has been minimal investigation into the interactive effects of extent and grain. To do this, we used a consis...

Protected areas (PAs) are considered a cornerstone of biodiversity conservation, and the number and extent of PAs are expanding rapidly worldwide. While designating more land as PAs is important, concerns about the degree to which existing PAs are effective in meeting conservation goals are growing. Unfortunately, conservation effectiveness of PAs...

Low‐level jets (LLJs) are relatively fast‐moving streams of air that form in the lower troposphere and are a common phenomenon across the Great Plains (GP) of the United States. LLJs play an important role in moisture transport and the development of nocturnal convection in the spring and summer. Alterations to surface moisture and energy fluxes ca...

Climate change is anticipated to influence all parts of agricultural production systems. However, the potential impacts on crop storage have rarely been assessed, even though storage is an important component of a grower’s marketing strategy and is essential for the continuous supply of a commodity for processors, exporters, and consumers. The Mich...

Multiple factors introduce uncertainty into projections of species distributions under climate change. The uncertainty introduced by the choice of baseline climate information used to calibrate a species distribution model and to downscale global climate model (GCM) simulations to a finer spatial resolution is a particular concern for mountainous r...

Derivation of the future projections using the delta method. (DOCX)

The 21 bamboo species evaluated in this study. (DOCX)

Spatial variations of the 19 baseline bioclimatic variables for the baseline remotely-sensed (RS) dataset and elevation of the study region. The bioclimatic variables are generated based on temperature (units of °C * 10) and precipitation (units of mm). The bioclimatic variables are long-term averages of annual mean temperature (bio1); mean diurnal...

The partial area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) test results for 10 replication runs for 21 bamboo species and three calibrations. The calculations were performed using an R package available at https://github.com/vijaybarve/ENMGadgets. The calculations employed a random sample of 50% of the testing points for bootstrapping...

Centroids (WGS 1984 UTM Zone 48N projection) of the 1 km x 1 km grid cells with at least one presence point for the 21 bamboo species included in the MaxEnt modeling. (XLSX)

Differences in the probability of presence between the future (2061–2080) and baseline climate periods for F. denudata, as estimated using the RS5 MaxEnt calibration. The results shown here used the “clamping” option in MaxEnt where variables outside the training range are treated as though they are at the limit of the training range. The 17 GCMs a...

The 19 bioclimatic variables used in this study. (DOCX)

The true skill statistic (TSS) evaluation of model performance for the baseline climate conditions averaged over 10 replication runs for the 21 bamboo species and three model calibrations when using 11 thresholds for converting probabilities to binary predictions of species presence. The numbers 1 through 11 in the table stand for the following thr...

Spatial variations of the 19 bioclimatic variables for the baseline WorldClim (WC) dataset and the elevation of the study region. The bioclimatic variables were generated based on temperature (units of °C * 10) and precipitation (units of mm). The bioclimatic variables are long-term averages of annual mean temperature (bio1); mean diurnal range (bi...

Scree plots of the principal components analyses (PCA) performed on the WorldClim (WC) and remotely-sensed (RS) datasets. (PDF)

An emerging literature discusses the effects of short-term temperature fluctuations on public opinion toward climate change. Yet, prior literature has not explored potential opinion-influencing effects of temporal patterns of temperature fluctuations or the interdependence between temperature anomalies and the direction and magnitude of short-term...

Understanding the impacts of climate change on agriculture is essential to ensure adequate future food production. Controlled growth experiments provide an effective tool for assessing the complex effects of climate change. However, a review of the use of climate projections in 57 previously published controlled growth studies found that none consi...

Water sustainability in megacities is a growing challenge with far reaching effects. Addressing sustainability requires an integrated, multidisciplinary approach able to capture interactions among hydrology, population growth, socioeconomic factors, and to reflect changes due to climate variability and land use. We developed a new systems modeling...

The southerly Great Plains low-level jet (GPLLJ) is one of the most significant circulation features of the central U.S. linking large-scale atmospheric circulation with the regional climate. GPLLJs transport heat and moisture, contribute to thunderstorm and severe weather formation, provide a corridor for the springtime migration of birds and inse...

Sea ice is an important component of the global climate system and a key indicator of climate change. A decreasing trend in Arctic sea-ice concentration is evident in recent years, whereas Antarctic sea-ice concentration exhibits a generally increasing trend. Various studies have investigated the underlying causes of the observed trends for each re...

Climatology, defined simply as the study of climate, has a long history. The emphasis of climatology in different eras of its development has fluctuated between the spatial distribution and the temporal variations of climate. Climatologists employ multiple data sources and methods to study climate, and climate models are a particularly important to...

Urban areas such as megacities (those with populations greater than 10 million) are hotspots of global water use and thus face intense water management challenges. Urban areas are influenced by local interactions between human and natural systems and interact with distant systems through flows of water, food, energy, people, information, and capita...

Geographers can meaningfully and uniquely contribute to problem solving and assist vulnerable populations in making informed decisions. Contemporary environmental and social problems are complex and accompanied by uncertainty. Decisions must be made in the face of this uncertainty. In this address, geographers are encouraged to embrace, rather than...

The inter-annual variability of southerly low-level jets (SLLJs) over North America during the warm (April–September) and cool (October–March) seasons is investigated. SLLJ occurrences over a 31-year period (1979–2009) were identified from the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) vertical wind profiles. The first empirical orthogonal function...

An ensemble of simulations from four regional climate models (RCMs) driven by a global reanalysis was obtained from the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) and used to evaluate the ability of the RCMs to simulate the long-term (1979–2000) climatology of southerly low-level jets (S-LLJs) in the central United States....

Public support for government involvement in assisting farmers adapt to climate change is higher than for adaptation more generally. Furthermore, results of a Michigan survey found views varied over the course of a warm spell. Accurately, interpreting public opinion is critical for effective policy formulation and decision making. Available online:...

Understanding the impacts of climate change on frost-free seasons is key to designing effective adaptation strategies for ecosystem management and agricultural production. This study examines the potential changes in the frost-free season length between historical (1971-2000) and future (2041-2070) periods over the contiguous USA with a focus on sp...

The North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) was used to develop an expanded, long-term (1979-2009) climatology of meridional (southerly and northerly) low-level jets over North America and surrounding coastal environs. NARR has greater spatial coverage and finer temporal (3 hourly) and horizontal (32 km) resolutions than do routine rawinsonde win...

Climate change is expected to alter the frequency and severity of atmospheric conditions conducive for wildfires. In this study, we assess potential changes in fire weather conditions for the contiguous United States using the Haines Index (HI), a fire weather index that has been employed operationally to detect atmospheric conditions favorable for...

Climatological analyses of low-level jets (LLJs) can be negatively influenced by the coarse spatial and temporal resolution and frequent changes in observing and archiving protocols of rawinsonde observations (raobs). The introduction of reanalysis datasets, such as the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR), provides new resources for climatolo...

Late spring freeze events, a significant agroclimatic hazard, are investigated for Poland. Daily minimum air temperatures from 184 stations for the period 1951-2010 were used to analyze the frequency and conditional probability of late spring freezes. In addition, three classification schemes were employed to investigate the atmospheric circulation...

Regression methods are commonly used to learn the mapping from a set of predictor variables to a continuous-valued target variable such that their prediction errors are minimized. However, minimizing the errors alone may not be sufficient for some applications, such as climate modeling, which require the overall predicted distribution to resemble t...

Climate change assessments often utilize only a small number of climate stations within the assessment region. Consequently, the selection of representative stations that capture the spatial variability of climate is an essential first step of the assessment. Furthermore, climate observations and scenarios frequently need to be linked with other (e...

There is a growing demand for multiple output prediction methods capable of both minimizing residual errors and capturing the joint distribution of the response variables in a realistic and consistent fashion. Unfortunately, current methods are designed to optimize one of the two criteria, but not both. This paper presents a framework for multiple...

Climate change is a fundamental aspect of the Anthropocene. Climate assessments are frequently undertaken to evaluate climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity. Assessments are complex endeavors with numerous challenges. Five aspects of a climate assessment that can be particularly challenging are highlighted: choice of assessmen...

This study was prompted by the apparent confusion in the meteorological and climatological literature on the time of day very heavy precipitation is most likely to occur. Harmonic analysis and cluster analysis were used to investigate the large-scale spatial variations in the diurnal cycle of very heavy precipitation in the United States east of th...

Synoptic climatology is defined as the study of climates from the viewpoint of their atmospheric circulation components and emphasizes the connection between circulation, weather phenomena, and climatic differentiation. The field is seen as having developed rapidly, starting in the 1950s, in both meteorology and geography. Some important historical...

Perennial crops are particularly vulnerable to climate given their exposure to fluctuating weather conditions throughout the year. Key climate-influenced vulnerabilities include winter chill fulfillment, springtime freeze risk, pollination, heat stress, and disease and insect pest pressure. Other contributions to vulnerability include changes in co...

Climate change is threatening global ecosystems through its impact on the survival of individual species and their ecological functions. Despite the important role of understorey plants in forest ecosystems, climate impact assessments on understorey plants and their role in supporting wildlife habitat are scarce in the literature. Here we assess cl...

In this study, dynamic and process based crop simulation models CERES-Maize and Wheat were used to identify potential future impacts of weather and climate on corn and wheat production at five sites in the Great Lake regions of USA. An ensample of climate scenarios was created using simulations from four GCMs (CGCM2, HadCM3, ECHAM4, and CCSM1), eac...

Climate change is projected to have substantial impacts in the Great Lakes region of the United States. One intent of this presentation is to introduce the Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments Center (GLISA), a recently-funded NOAA RISA center. The goals and unique organizational structure of GLISA will be described along with core activ...

The National Research Council report, Understanding the Changing Planet: Strategic Directions for the Geographi- cal Sciences, is thought-provoking, particularly for professional geographers who must position their discipline and themselves with respect to a potentially new, transdisciplinary field, referred to in the report as geographical science...

The majority of climate change impact assessments focus on potential impacts at the local ⁄ regional scale. Climate change scenarios with a fine spatial resolution are essential components of these assessments. Scenarios must be designed with the goals of the assessment in mind. Often the scientists and stakeholders leading, or participating in, im...

Although downscaling methods for deriving local ⁄ regional climate change scenarios have been extensively studied, little guidance exists on how to use the downscaled scenarios in applications such as impact assessments. In this second part of a two-part communication, we review for nonclimate scientists a number of practical considerations when ut...

A conceptual framework for climate change assessments of international market systems that involve long-term investments is proposed. The framework is a hybrid of dynamic and static modeling. Dynamic modeling is used for those system components for which temporally continuous modeling is possible, while fixed time slices are used for other system c...

The 2005 AMS membership survey was used to update a previous analysis of the salary and advancement of women faculty in atmospheric science. The survey revealed that between 1993 and 2005, the number of AMS members working within academia who responded to the membership survey increased substantially. The 2005 AMS survey pointed to lower average sa...

A forty-year (1961–2000) climatology of southerly and northerly low-level jets (LLJs) was prepared from twice-daily rawinsonde observations for thirty-six stations in the central United States. Although there is extensive literature on southerly jets, their spatial variability has received little attention. Furthermore, there is a paucity of studie...

The 2005 membership survey is the fifth in a series of surveys that has monitored the composition of the AMS since 1975. The responses of the 2005 survey reveal several interesting changes in the educational level, employment characteristics, and personal status of Society members. The proportion of members with Ph.D. degrees has increased with tim...

The Haines index is used in wildfire forecasting and monitoring to evaluate the potential contributions of atmospheric stability and humidity to the behavior of plume-dominated wildfires. The index has three variants ("low," "mid," and "high") that accommodate differences in surface elevation. As originally formulated, the low variant is calculated...

The Haines Index is an operational tool for evaluating the potential contribution of dry, unstable air to the development of large or erratic plume-dominated wildfires. The index has three variants related to surface elevation, and is calculated from temperature and humidity measurements at atmospheric pressure levels. To effectively use the Haines...

Article published in Fire Management Today

Airflow trajectories were used to create a long-term (40-year) air mass climatology for the lower peninsula of Michigan. The climatology provides a necessary baseline for evaluating the impact of changes in airflow on historical and potential future variations in temperature and precipitation. Five-day back trajectories were calculated four times p...

The effectiveness and utility of soil chronofunctions is examined in the light of existing pedogenic theory. Statistical treatments applied in chronofunction research are reviewed, including linear transformations of raw data, which may improve the utility of the chronofunction. We advocate using a particular statistical model only if it can be jus...

A temperature-based model simulating the growth and development of sour cherry (Prunus cerasus L.) was developed to determine the impacts of climate in past and potential future time trends. Phenological development from 'side green' through 'petal fall' stages is driven in the model by daily growing degree-day accumulation from January 1 with an e...

Temporal trends in the frequency and characteristics of low-level jets are poorly understood, even though low-level jets are an important circulation feature. Analysis of the temporal trends of low-level jets is complicated by station relocations and changes in observation protocols, which make it difficult to separate artificial trends from climat...

Low-level jets (LLJs) have long been identified as important mesoscale weather phenomena that contribute to the temperature and moisture climatology of central North America. Most previous climatological research has focused on summertime, southerly LLJs in the region of most frequent LLJ activity, the central Plains. This study, utilizing a 40-yea...

The Haines Index is a frequently used tool in wildfire weather forecasting and monitoring. The index has three versions (“low,” “mid,” and “high”) that consider differences in surface elevation. The “low” index uses temperature and humidity observations at 850 hPa and temperature observations at 950 hPa. In 1991 the National Weather Service impleme...

Originally introduced in 1988 as the “Lower Atmospheric Severity Index”, the Haines Index (HI) characterizes the potential impact of dry, unstable air on wildfires. Although imperfect, HI remains a widely-used tool in wildfire forecasting and monitoring. HI is computed from lower-troposphere temperature and dewpoint observations and has three diffe...

The Haines Index is a frequently used tool in wildfire weather forecasting and monitoring. Introduced in 1988 as the “Lower Atmospheric Severity Index,” this index is a function of temperature and dewpoint in the lower troposphere, and has three different versions (referred to as the “low,” “mid,” and “high” Haines Index) that consider differences...