Claas Teichmann

The European climate under a 2 °C global warming

A global warming of 2 C relative to pre-industrial climate has been considered as a threshold which society should endeavor to remain below, in order to limit the dangerous effects of anthropogenic climate change. The possible changes in regional climate under this target level of global warming have so far not been investigated in detail. Using an ensemble of 15 regional climate simulations downscaling six transient global climate simulations, we identify the respective time periods corresponding to 2 C global warming, describe the range of projected changes for the European climate for this level of global warming, and investigate the uncertainty across the multi-model ensemble. Robust changes in mean and extreme temperature, precipitation, winds and surface energy budgets are found based on the ensemble of simulations. The results indicate that most of Europe will experience higher warming than the global average. They also reveal strong distributional patterns across Europe, which will be important in subsequent impact assessments and adaptation responses in different countries and regions. For instance, a North‐South (West‐East) warming gradient is found for summer (winter) along with a general increase in heavy precipitation and summer extreme temperatures. Tying the ensemble analysis to time periods with a prescribed global temperature change rather than fixed time periods allows for the identification of more robust regional patterns of temperature changes due to removal of some of the uncertainty related to the global models’ climate sensitivity.

A polarized discrete ordinate scattering model for simulations of limb and nadir long-wave measurements in 1-D/3-D spherical atmospheres

This article describes one of the scattering algorithms of the three-dimensional polarized radiative transfer model ARTS (Atmospheric Radiative Transfer Simulator) which has been implemented to study for example the influence of cirrus clouds on microwave limb sounding. The model uses the DOIT (Discrete Ordinate Iterative) method to solve the vector radiative transfer equation. The implementation of a discrete ordinate method is challenging due to the spherical geometry of the model atmosphere which is required for the simulation of limb radiances. The involved numerical issues, which are grid optimization and interpolation methods, are discussed in this paper. Scattering simulations are presented for limb- and down-looking geometries, for one-dimensional and three-dimensional spherical atmospheres. They show the impact of cloud particle size, shape, and orientation on the brightness temperatures and on the polarization of microwave radiation in the atmosphere. The cloud effect is much larger for limb radiances than for nadir radiances. Particle size is a very important parameter in all simulations. The polarization signal is negligible for simulations with completely randomly oriented particles, whereas for horizontally aligned particles with random azimuthal orientation the polarization signal is significant. Moreover, the effect of particle shape is only relevant for oriented cloud particles. The simulations show that it is essential to use a three-dimensional scattering model for inhomogeneous cloud layers.

Precipitation in the EURO-CORDEX 0.11° and 0.44° simulations: high resolution, high benefits ?

In the framework of the EURO-CORDEX initiative an ensemble of European-wide high-resolution regional climate simulations on a 0.11∘(∼12.5km)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}

The impact of climate change on photovoltaic power generation in Europe

0.11^{\circ }\,({\sim}12.5\,\hbox {km})

Land‐atmosphere coupling in EURO‐CORDEX evaluation experiments

\end{document} grid has been generated. This study investigates whether the fine-gridded regional climate models are found to add value to the simulated mean and extreme daily and sub-daily precipitation compared to their coarser-gridded 0.44∘(∼50km)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}

Simulation of medicanes over the Mediterranean Sea in a regional climate model ensemble: impact of ocean–atmosphere coupling and increased resolution

0.44^{\circ }\,({\sim}50\,\hbox {km})