Impacts of climate change on mid‐twenty‐first‐century rainfall in Ireland: a high‐resolution regional climate model ensemble approach

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (12) ◽  
pp. 4347-4363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Nolan ◽  
John O'Sullivan ◽  
Ray McGrath
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hussain Alsarraf

<p>The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of climate change on the changes on summer surface temperatures between present (2000-2010) and future (2050-2060) over the Arabian Peninsula and Kuwait. In this study, the influence of climate change in the Arabian Peninsula and especially in Kuwait was investigated by high resolution (36, 12, and 4 km grid spacing) dynamic downscaling from the Community Climate System Model CCSM4 using the WRF Weather Research and Forecasting model. The downscaling results were first validated by comparing National Centers for Environmental Prediction NCEP model outputs with the observational data. The global climate change dynamic downscaling model was run using WRF regional climate model simulations (2000-2010) and future projections (2050-2060). The influence of climate change in the Arabian Peninsula can be projected from the differences between the two period’s model simulations. The regional model simulations of the average maximum surface temperature in summertime predicted an increase from 1◦C to 3 ◦C over the summertime in Kuwait by midcentury.</p><p><strong> </strong></p>


2012 ◽  
Vol 57 (10) ◽  
pp. 1188-1195 ◽  
Author(s):  
XueJie Gao ◽  
Ying Shi ◽  
DongFeng Zhang ◽  
Filippo Giorgi

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (13) ◽  
pp. 4664-4687 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward K. Vizy ◽  
Kerry H. Cook ◽  
Julien Crétat ◽  
Naresh Neupane

Abstract Confident regional-scale climate change predictions for the Sahel are needed to support adaptation planning. State-of-the-art regional climate model (RCM) simulations at 90- and 30-km resolutions are run and analyzed along with output from five coupled atmosphere–ocean GCMs (AOGCMs) from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) to predict how the Sahel summer surface temperature, precipitation, and surface moisture are likely to change at the mid- and late-twenty-first century due to increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations under the representative concentration pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) emission scenario and evaluate confidence in such projections. Future lateral boundary conditions are derived from CMIP5 AOGCMs. It is shown that the regional climate model can realistically simulate the current summer evolution of the West African monsoon climate including the onset and demise of the Sahel wet season, a necessary but not sufficient condition for confident prediction. RCM and AOGCM projections indicate the likelihood for increased surface air temperatures over this century, with Sahara and Sahel temperature increases of 2–3.5 K by midcentury, and 3–6 K by late century. Summer rainfall and surface moisture are also projected to increase over most of the Sahel. This is primarily associated with an increase in rainfall intensity and not a lengthening of the wet season. Pinpointing exactly when the rainfall and surface moisture increase will first commence and by exactly what magnitude is less certain as these predictions appear to be model dependent. Models that simulate stronger warming over the Sahara are associated with larger and earlier rainfall increases over the Sahel due to an intensification of the low-level West African westerly jet, and vice versa.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 5687-5737 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Tramblay ◽  
D. Ruelland ◽  
S. Somot ◽  
R. Bouaicha ◽  
E. Servat

Abstract. In the framework of the international CORDEX program, new regional climate model (RCM) simulations at high spatial resolutions are becoming available for the Mediterranean region (Med-CORDEX initiative). This study provides the first evaluation for hydrological impact studies of these high-resolution simulations. Different approaches are compared to analyze the climate change impacts on the hydrology of a catchment located in North Morocco, using a high-resolution RCM (ALADIN-Climate) from the Med-CORDEX initiative at two different spatial resolutions (50 km and 12 km) and for two different Radiative Concentration Pathway scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). The main issues addressed in the present study are: (i) what is the impact of increased RCM resolution on present-climate hydrological simulations and on future projections? (ii) Are the bias-correction of the RCM model and the parameters of the hydrological model stationary and transferable to different climatic conditions? (iii) What is the climate and hydrological change signal based on the new Radiative Concentration Pathways scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5)? Results indicate that high resolution simulations at 12 km better reproduce the seasonal patterns, the seasonal distributions and the extreme events of precipitation. The parameters of the hydrological model, calibrated to reproduce runoff at the monthly time step over the 1984–2010 period, do not show a strong variability between dry and wet calibration periods in a differential split-sample test. However the bias correction of precipitation by quantile-matching does not give satisfactory results in validation using the same differential split-sample testing method. Therefore a quantile-perturbation method that does not rely on any stationarity assumption and produces ensembles of perturbed series of precipitation was introduced. The climate change signal under scenarios 4.5 and 8.5 indicates a decrease of respectively −30% to −57% in surface runoff for the mid-term (2041–2062), when for the same period the projections for precipitation are ranging between −15% and −19% and for temperature between +1.28°C and +1.87°C.


2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 1661-1684 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Notaro ◽  
Val Bennington ◽  
Steve Vavrus

Abstract Projected changes in lake-effect snowfall by the mid- and late twenty-first century are explored for the Laurentian Great Lakes basin. Simulations from two state-of-the-art global climate models within phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) are dynamically downscaled according to the representative concentration pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5). The downscaling is performed using the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) Regional Climate Model version 4 (RegCM4) with 25-km grid spacing, interactively coupled to a one-dimensional lake model. Both downscaled models produce atmospheric warming and increased cold-season precipitation. The Great Lakes’ ice cover is projected to dramatically decline and, by the end of the century, become confined to the northern shallow lakeshores during mid-to-late winter. Projected reductions in ice cover and greater dynamically induced wind fetch lead to enhanced lake evaporation and resulting total lake-effect precipitation, although with increased rainfall at the expense of snowfall. A general reduction in the frequency of heavy lake-effect snowstorms is simulated during the twenty-first century, except with increases around Lake Superior by the midcentury when local air temperatures still remain low enough for wintertime precipitation to largely fall in the form of snow. Despite the significant progress made here in elucidating the potential future changes in lake-effect snowstorms across the Great Lakes basin, further research is still needed to downscale a larger ensemble of CMIP5 model simulations, ideally using a higher-resolution, nonhydrostatic regional climate model coupled to a three-dimensional lake model.


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