In this, you will analyze the future projections of California wildfires from a global climate model under the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario combined with a statistical...

In this, you will analyze the future projections of California wildfires from a global climate model under the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario combined with a statistical downscaling model.

a. You can download the statistical downscaling model output for monthly area burned from here:
http://albers.cnr.berkeley.edu/data/ucmerced/wildfire_monthly/CanESM2/rcp85/CanESM2_85_AA.monthly_all.bau.mu.nc. The variable “hectares” is the monthly area burned (in the unit of hectares per month) and covers 1953 to 2099. Here we can choose a 30-year average during 1961-1990 to represent the present climate, a 30-year average during 2035-2064 to represent the near-term future climate, and a 30-year average during 2070-2099 to represent the long-term future climate. Plot the annual mean area burned for the state of California as a function of longitude and latitude for the present, near-term future, and long-term future climates. Use an identical colormap for these plots.

b. Next make a plot of monthly, statewide averaged, area burned as a function of 12 months for the present, near-term future and long-term future climates.

Hints: you may want to use nanmean (instead of mean) to do the area average so to include all the grid points in the state of California only.

c. Next make a time series plot of annual mean, statewide averaged, area burned during 1953 to 2099.

Please submit your
plots
and
code.