scholarly journals Projected changes in extreme warm and cold temperatures in China from 1.5 to 5°C global warming

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (8) ◽  
pp. 3942-3953 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ting Hu ◽  
Ying Sun
Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 1494
Author(s):  
Bernardo Teufel ◽  
Laxmi Sushama

Fluvial flooding in Canada is often snowmelt-driven, thus occurs mostly in spring, and has caused billions of dollars in damage in the past decade alone. In a warmer climate, increasing rainfall and changing snowmelt rates could lead to significant shifts in flood-generating mechanisms. Here, projected changes to flood-generating mechanisms in terms of the relative contribution of snowmelt and rainfall are assessed across Canada, based on an ensemble of transient climate change simulations performed using a state-of-the-art regional climate model. Changes to flood-generating mechanisms are assessed for both a late 21st century, high warming (i.e., Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5) scenario, and in a 2 °C global warming context. Under 2 °C of global warming, the relative contribution of snowmelt and rainfall to streamflow peaks is projected to remain close to that of the current climate, despite slightly increased rainfall contribution. In contrast, a high warming scenario leads to widespread increases in rainfall contribution and the emergence of hotspots of change in currently snowmelt-dominated regions across Canada. In addition, several regions in southern Canada would be projected to become rainfall dominated. These contrasting projections highlight the importance of climate change mitigation, as remaining below the 2 °C global warming threshold can avoid large changes over most regions, implying a low likelihood that expensive flood adaptation measures would be necessary.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoine Hochet ◽  
Rémi Tailleux ◽  
Till Kuhlbrodt ◽  
David Ferreira

AbstractThe representation of ocean heat uptake in Simple Climate Models used for policy advice on climate change mitigation strategies is often based on variants of the one-dimensional Vertical Advection/Diffusion equation (VAD) for some averaged form of potential temperature. In such models, the effective advection and turbulent diffusion are usually tuned to emulate the behaviour of a given target climate model. However, because the statistical nature of such a “behavioural” calibration usually obscures the exact dependence of the effective diffusion and advection on the actual physical processes responsible for ocean heat uptake, it is difficult to understand its limitations and how to go about improving VADs. This paper proposes a physical calibration of the VAD that aims to provide explicit traceability of effective diffusion and advection to the processes responsible for ocean heat uptake. This construction relies on the coarse-graining of the full three-dimensional advection diffusion for potential temperature using potential temperature coordinates. The main advantage of this formulation is that the temporal evolution of the reference temperature profile is entirely due to the competition between effective diffusivity that is always positive definite, and the water mass transformation taking place at the surface, as in classical water mass analyses literature. These quantities are evaluated in numerical simulations of present day climate and global warming experiments. In this framework, the heat uptake in the global warming experiment is attributed to the increase of surface heat flux at low latitudes, its decrease at high latitudes and to the redistribution of heat toward cold temperatures made by diffusive flux.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoine Hochet ◽  
Remi Tailleux ◽  
Till Kuhlbrodt ◽  
David Ferreira

Abstract The representation of ocean heat uptake in Simple Climate Models used for policy advice on climate change mitigation strategies is often based on variants of the one-dimensional Vertical Advection/Diffusion equation (VAD) for some averaged form of potential temperature. In such models, the effective advection and turbulent diffusion are usually tuned to emulate the behaviour of a given target climate model. However, because the statistical nature of such a \behavioural" calibration usually obscures the exact dependence of the effective diffusion and advection on the actual physical processes responsible for ocean heat uptake, it is difficult to understand its limitations and how to go about improving VAD. This paper proposes a physical calibration of the VAD that aims to provide explicit traceability of effective diffusion and advection to the processes responsible for ocean heat uptake. This construction relies on the coarse-graining of the full three-dimensional advection diffusion for potential temperature using potential temperature coordinates. The main advantage of this formulation is that the temporal evolution of the reference temperature profile is entirely due to the competition between effective diffusivity that is always positive definite, and the water mass transformation taking place at the surface, as in classical water mass analyses literature. These quantities are evaluated in numerical simulations of present day climate and global warming experiments. In this framework, the heat uptake in the global warming experiment is attributed to the increase of surface heat flux at low latitudes, its decrease at high latitudes and to the redistribution of heat toward cold temperatures made by diffusive flux.


2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 1354-1373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinhua Yu ◽  
Yuqing Wang ◽  
Kevin Hamilton

Abstract This paper reports on an analysis of the tropical cyclone (TC) potential intensity (PI) and its control parameters in transient global warming simulations. Specifically, the TC PI is calculated for phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) integrations during the first 70 yr of a transient run forced by a 1% yr−1 CO2 increase. The linear trend over the period is used to project a 70-yr change in relevant model parameters. The results for a 15-model ensemble-mean climate projection show that the thermodynamic potential intensity (THPI) increases on average by 1.0% to ∼3.1% over various TC basins, which is mainly attributed to changes in the disequilibrium in enthalpy between the ocean and atmosphere in the transient response to increasing CO2 concentrations. This modest projected increase in THPI is consistent with that found in other recent studies. In this paper the effects of evolving large-scale dynamical factors on the projected TC PI are also quantified, using an empirical formation that takes into account the effects of vertical shear and translational speed based on a statistical analysis of present-day observations. Including the dynamical efficiency in the formulation of PI leads to larger projected changes in PI relative to that obtained using just THPI in some basins and smaller projected changes in others. The inclusion of the dynamical efficiency has the largest relative effect in the main development region (MDR) of the North Atlantic, where it leads to a 50% reduction in the projected PI change. Results are also presented for the basin-averaged changes in PI for the climate projections from each of the 15 individual models. There is considerable variation among the results for individual model projections, and for some models the projected increase in PI in the eastern Pacific and south Indian Ocean regions exceeds 10%.


Climate ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 143
Author(s):  
Obed M. Ogega ◽  
Benjamin A. Gyampoh ◽  
Malcolm N. Mistry

This study assessed the performance of 24 simulations, from five regional climate models (RCMs) participating in the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX), in representing spatiotemporal characteristics of precipitation over West Africa, compared to observations. The top five performing RCM simulations were used to assess future precipitation changes over West Africa, under 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C global warming levels (GWLs), following the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5. The performance evaluation and future change assessment were done using a set of seven ‘descriptors’ of West African precipitation namely the simple precipitation intensity index (SDII), the consecutive wet days (CWD), the number of wet days index (R1MM), the number of wet days with moderate and heavy intensity precipitation (R10MM and R30MM, respectively), and annual and June to September daily mean precipitation (ANN and JJAS, respectively). The performance assessment and future change outlook were done for the CORDEX–Africa subdomains of north West Africa (WA-N), south West Africa (WA-S), and a combination of the two subdomains. While the performance of RCM runs was descriptor- and subregion- specific, five model runs emerged as top performers in representing precipitation characteristics over both WA-N and WA-S. The five model runs are CCLM4 forced by ICHEC-EC-EARTH (r12i1p1), RCA4 forced by CCCma-CanESM2 (r1i1p1), RACMO22T forced by MOHC-HadGEM2-ES (r1i1p1), and the ensemble means of simulations made by CCLM4 and RACMO22T. All precipitation descriptors recorded a reduction under the two warming levels, except the SDII which recorded an increase. Unlike the WA-N that showed less frequency and more intense precipitation, the WA-S showed increased frequency and intensity. Given the potential impact that these projected changes may have on West Africa’s socioeconomic activities, adjustments in investment may be required to take advantage of (and enhance system resilience against damage that may result from) the potential changes in precipitation.


SOLA ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 85-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Kimoto ◽  
N. Yasutomi ◽  
C. Yokoyama ◽  
S. Emori

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