F. Giorgi

Climate Scenarios for the Southeastern U.S. Based on GCM and Regional Model Simulations

We analyze the control runs and 2 × CO2 projections (5-yearlengths) of the CSIRO Mk 2 GCM and the RegCM2 regional climate model, which was nested in the CSIRO GCM, over the Southeastern U.S.; and we present the development of climate scenarios for use in an integrated assessment of agriculture. The RegCM exhibits smaller biases in both maximum and minimum temperature compared to the CSIRO. Domain average precipitation biases are generally negative and relatively small in winter, spring, and fall, but both models produce large positive biases in summer, that of the RegCM being the larger. Spatial pattern correlations of the model control runs and observations show that the RegCM reproduces better than the CSIRO the spatial patterns of precipitation, minimum and maximum temperature in all seasons. Under climate change conditions, the most salient feature from the point of view of scenarios for agriculture is the large decreases in summer precipitation, about 20% in the CSIRO and 30% in the RegCM. Increases in springprecipitation are found in both models, about 35% in the CSIRO and 25% in theRegCM. Precipitation decreases of about 20% dominate in winter in the CSIRO,while a more complex pattern of increases and decreases is exhibited by the regional model. Temperature increases by 3 to 5 °C in the CSIRO, the higher values dominating in winter and spring. In the RegCM, temperature increases are much more spatially and temporally variable, ranging from 1 to 7 °C acrossall months and grids. In summer large increases (up to 7 °C) in maximum temperature are found in the northeastern part of the domain where maximum drying occurs.

Regional climate model simulation of projected 21st century climate change over an all-Africa domain: Comparison analysis of nested and driving model results

[1]xa0We analyze a transient climate change simulation for the 21st century (1980–2100) over a large all-Africa domain carried out with the RegCM3 regional model driven by the ECHAM5 global model. We focus the analysis on a comparison between the driving and nested model runs. For present climate, the two models show temperature and precipitation biases of similar magnitude but different spatial patterns. In particular the bias patterns in the regional model driven by ECHAM5 are more similar to those of a regional simulation driven by ERA Interim reanalysis fields than to the bias patterns in the present climate simulation by ECHAM5 itself. In the transient simulation, while the temperature changes are strongly driven by the global model, the precipitation change patterns are more different between the global and regional models, particularly over the West Africa and Sahel regions. A targeted analysis suggests that this is due to the different simulation by the two models of the local response to El Nino–Southern Oscillation forcing and of local soil moisture/precipitation feedbacks. Our results thus indicate that local processes and internal model physics and characteristics are important elements in determining the precipitation change signal simulated by the nested regional model in this large domain experiment, especially over equatorial and tropical regions. This adds an element of uncertainty that needs to be address through the use of ensembles of regional model experiments as planned in the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) project.

Consistency of projected drought over the Sahel with changes in the monsoon circulation and extremes in a regional climate model projections

Received 9 August 2009; revised 7 January 2010; accepted 15 February 2010; published 21 August 2010. [1] As a step toward an increased understanding of climate change over West Africa, in this paper we analyze the relationship between rainfall changes and monsoon dynamics in high‐resolution regional climate model experiments performed using the Regional Climate Model (RegCM3). Multidecadal simulations are carried out for present‐day and future climate conditions under increased greenhouse gas forcing driven by the global climate model European Center/Hamburg 5 (ECHAM5). Compared to the present day, the future scenario simulation produces drier conditions over the Sahel and wetter conditions over orographic areas. The Sahel drying is accompanied by a weaker monsoon flow, a southward migration and strengthening of the African Easterly Jet, a weakening of the Tropical Easterly Jet, a decrease of the deep core of ascent between the jets, and reduced African Easterly Wave activity. These circulation changes are characteristics of dry periods over the Sahel and are similar to the conditions found in the late twentieth century observed drought over the region. Changes in extreme events suggest that the drier conditions over the Sahel are associated with more frequent occurrences of drought periods. The projected drought over the Sahel is thus physically consistent with changes in the monsoon circulation and the extreme indices (maximum dry spell length and 5 day precipitation).

Modeling of sea salt in a regional climate model: Fluxes and radiative forcing

[1]xa0The Regional Climate Model (RegCM) is used as the modeling framework for regional-scale sea-salt simulations. This is the first step toward the use of a regional climate model to study sea-salt radiative effects on regional climate, and it is the first published attempt to include radiatively active sea-salt aerosols within a regional climate modeling framework. A sea-salt generation module including both fine and coarse particle modes is coupled and assessed within the RegCM system in terms of its ability to simulate sea salt at the regional scale. The model is tested for three prominent sea-salt-producing areas, the Mediterranean Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the northern Atlantic Ocean. In all these regions it shows a good performance in simulating sea-salt fluxes and concentrations compared to available observations or other modeling systems. We also assess the simulation of sea-salt radiative forcing by comparison with satellite observations of aerosol optical depth, showing that accumulation mode particles may have a dominant role in sea salt–radiation interactions.

Local effects of climate change over the Alpine region: A study with a high resolution regional climate model with a surrogate climate change scenario

[1]xa0We discuss a surrogate climate change (SCC) simulation over the Alpine region with a high resolution regional climate model (RegCM3) using a fine scale sub-grid land surface representation. Multi-year simulations are completed with an imposed illustrative 3K warming on the forcing large scale meteorological conditions and on the sea surface temperatures in the interior domain. The corresponding relative humidity is kept constant, which results in an increase of atmospheric moisture. We find that in the winter season precipitation increases consistently with the SCC approach, with a significant dependence on topographical elevation. Other components of the surface energy and water budgets also show a marked elevation dependency, mostly tied to changes in snow cover. In summer, contrary to what might be expected from the SCC forcing, precipitation decreases over the Alpine mountain chain. This is due to a local surface-atmosphere feedback mechanism involving reduced snow cover and soil moisture at the beginning of summer. Our results suggest that over the Alps during summer local feedbacks related to the surface energy and water budgets are important factors in determining the precipitation response to global warming. This result might extend to other mid-latitude mountainous areas.

Seasonal and intraseasonal changes of African monsoon climates in 21st century CORDEX projections

We analyze a mini ensemble of regional climate projections over the CORDEX Africa domain carried out with RegCM4 model as part of the Phase I CREMA experiment (Giorgi 2013). RegCM4 is driven by the HadGEM2-ES and MPI-ESM global models for the RCP8.5 and RCP4.5 greenhouse gas and aerosol concentration scenarios. The focus of the analysis is on seasonal and intraseasonal monsoon characteristics. We find two prominent change signals. Over West Africa and the Sahel MPI produces a forward shift in the monsoon season in line with previous findings, and this shift is also simulated by the RegCM4. Furthermore, the regional model produces a widespread decrease of monsoon precipitation (when driven by both MPI and HadGEM) associated with decreased easterly wave activity in the 6–9xa0days regime and with soil moisture-precipitation interactions. South of the equator we find an extension of the dry season with delayed onset and anticipated recession of the monsoon and a narrowing and strengthening of the ITCZ precipitation band. This signal is consistent in all global and regional model projections, although with different spatial detail. We plan to enlarge this mini-ensemble as a further contribution to the CORDEX project to better assess the robustness of the signals found in this paper.

Validation of a High-Resolution Regional Climate Model for the Alpine Region and Effects of a Subgrid-Scale Topography and Land Use Representation

Abstract A mosaic-type parameterization of subgrid-scale topography and land use (SubBATS) is applied for a high-resolution regional climate simulation over the Alpine region with a regional climate model (RegCM3). The model coarse-gridcell size in the control simulation is 15 km while the subgridcell size is 3 km. The parameterization requires disaggregation of atmospheric variables from the coarse grid to the subgrid and aggregation of surface fluxes from the subgrid to the coarse grid. Two 10-yr simulations (1983–92) are intercompared, one without (CONT) and one with (SUB) the subgrid scheme. The authors first validate the CONT simulation, showing that it produces good quality temperature and precipitation statistics, showing in particular a good performance compared to previous runs of this region. The subgrid scheme produces much finer detail of temperature and snow distribution following the topographic disaggregation. It also tends to form and melt snow more accurately in response to the heterogene...

Historical and future changes in maximum and minimum temperature records over Europe

Recent studies examining changes in temperature record frequency over the continental United States have reported that the number of Tmax records has been increasing over the past 50 years and occurring at twice the frequency of Tmin records. In a stationary climate, the number of records should decrease with time as 1/n, where n is the number of years of record-keeping. Here we seek to understand how European temperature records have changed during the late 20th century and how they are expected to change as greenhouse gases increase during the 21st century, using a new ensemble method to filter out the effect of the starting year in the calculation of the records. We find that until 1980, the ratio of Tmax to Tmin records remains close to one, indicating that the climate was relatively stationary. After 1980, there is a distinct positive trend where the observed ratio averages around four during the early part of the 21st century, indicative of a warming trend. We note considerable spatial variability in the observations. Further, the ratio of Tmax to Tmin records set by the year 2100 as simulated by five RCM simulations reaches values of up to several hundred by the end of the 21st century. However, the changes in record frequency vary spatially over Europe. The models project the highest numbers of Tmax records over the Mediterranean during summer, and Scandinavia during the spring and fall. Tmin records decrease most substantially over eastern Europe and western Russia, and the Mediterranean. Our analysis confirms the value of the use of maximum and minimum temperature records in regional climate change studies.

A sensitivity study on the role of the swamps of southern Sudan in the summer climate of North Africa using a regional climate model

We used the regional climate model RegCM3 to investigate the role of the swamps of southern Sudan in affecting the climate of the surrounding region. Towards this end, we first assessed the performance of a high resolution version of the model over northern Africa. RegCM3 shows a good skill in simulating the climatology of rainfall and temperature patterns as well as the related circulation features during the summer season, outperforming previous coarser resolution applications of the model over this region. Sensitivity experiments reveal that, relative to bare soil conditions, the swamps act to locally modify the surface energy budget primarily through an increase of surface latent heat flux. Existence of the swamps leads to lower ground temperature (up to 2xa0°C), a larger north–south temperature gradient, and increased local rainfall (up to 40xa0%). Of particular importance is the impact on rainfall in the surrounding regions. The swamps have almost no impact on the rainfall over the source region of the Nile in Ethiopia or in the Sahel region; however, they favor wetter conditions over central Sudan (up to 15xa0%) in comparison to the bare desert soil conditions.

A consistent picture of the hydroclimatic response to global warming from multiple indices: Models and observations

We analyze trends of six daily precipitation-based and physically interconnected hydroclimatic indices in an ensemble of historical and 21st century climate projections under forcing from increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations (Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP)8.5), along with gridded (land only) observations for the late decades of the twentieth century. The indices include metrics of intensity (SDII) and extremes (R95) of precipitation, dry (DSL), and wet spell length, the hydroclimatic intensity index (HY-INT), and a newly introduced index of precipitation area (PA). All the indices in both the 21st century and historical simulations provide a consistent picture of a predominant shift toward a hydroclimatic regime of more intense, shorter, less frequent, and less widespread precipitation events in response to GHG-induced global warming. The trends are larger and more spatially consistent over tropical than extratropical regions, pointing to the importance of tropical convection in regulating this response, and show substantial regional spatial variability. Observed trends in the indices analyzed are qualitatively and consistently in line with the simulated ones, at least at the global and full tropical scale, further supporting the robustness of the identified prevailing hydroclimatic responses. The HY-INT, PA, and R95 indices show the most consistent response to global warming, and thus offer the most promising tools for formal hydroclimatic model validation and detection/attribution studies. The physical mechanism underlying this response and some of the applications of our results are also discussed.