scholarly journals Regional Climate Modeling over South America: A Review

2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvina A. Solman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
South America ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Modeling ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Climate Change ◽  
Regional Climate Models ◽  
Regional Climate Modeling ◽  
South American ◽  
Sensitivity Studies

This review summarizes the progress achieved on regional climate modeling activities over South America since the early efforts at the beginning of the 2000s until now. During the last 10 years, simulations with regional climate models (RCMs) have been performed for several purposes over the region. Early efforts were mainly focused on sensitivity studies to both physical mechanisms and technical aspects of RCMs. The last developments were focused mainly on providing high-resolution information on regional climate change. This paper describes the most outstanding contributions from the isolated efforts to the ongoing coordinated RCM activities in the framework of the CORDEX initiative, which represents a major endeavor to produce ensemble climate change projections at regional scales and allows exploring the associated range of uncertainties. The remaining challenges in modeling South American climate features are also discussed.

Regional Climate Modeling for the Baltic Sea Region

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Kjellström ◽  
Ole Bøssing Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Baltic Sea ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Modeling ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Climate Modeling ◽  
Sea Surface ◽  
The Baltic Sea ◽  
Baltic Sea Region ◽  
The Baltic

Regional climate models (RCMs) are commonly used to provide detailed regional to local information for climate change assessments, impact studies, and work on climate change adaptation. The Baltic Sea region is well suited for RCM evaluation due to its complexity and good availability of observations. Evaluation of RCM performance over the Baltic Sea region suggests that: • Given appropriate boundary conditions, RCMs can reproduce many aspects of the climate in the Baltic Sea region. • High resolution improves the ability of RCMs to simulate significant processes in a realistic way. • When forced by global climate models (GCMs) with errors in their representation of the large-scale atmospheric circulation and/or sea surface conditions, performance of RCMs deteriorates. • Compared to GCMs, RCMs can add value on the regional scale, related to both the atmosphere and other parts of the climate system, such as the Baltic Sea, if appropriate coupled regional model systems are used. Future directions for regional climate modeling in the Baltic Sea region would involve testing and applying even more high-resolution, convection permitting, models to generally better represent climate features like heavy precipitation extremes. Also, phenomena more specific to the Baltic Sea region are expected to benefit from higher resolution (these include, for example, convective snowbands over the sea in winter). Continued work on better describing the fully coupled regional climate system involving the atmosphere and its interaction with the sea surface and land areas is also foreseen as beneficial. In this respect, atmospheric aerosols are important components that deserve more attention.

Improving the Simulation of Large Lakes in Regional Climate Modeling: Two-Way Lake–Atmosphere Coupling with a 3D Hydrodynamic Model of the Great Lakes

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (5) ◽  
pp. 1605-1627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pengfei Xue ◽  
Jeremy S. Pal ◽  
Xinyu Ye ◽  
John D. Lenters ◽  
Chenfu Huang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Great Lakes ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Modeling ◽  
Thermal Structure ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Climate Models ◽  
Regional Climate Modeling ◽  
Spatiotemporal Variability ◽  
Lake Ice ◽  
Large Lakes

Abstract Accurate representations of lake–ice–atmosphere interactions in regional climate modeling remain one of the most critical and unresolved issues for understanding large-lake ecosystems and their watersheds. To date, the representation of the Great Lakes two-way interactions in regional climate models is achieved with one-dimensional (1D) lake models applied at the atmospheric model lake grid points distributed spatially across a 2D domain. While some progress has been made in refining 1D lake model processes, such models are fundamentally incapable of realistically resolving a number of physical processes in the Great Lakes. In this study, a two-way coupled 3D lake-ice–climate modeling system [Great Lakes–Atmosphere Regional Model (GLARM)] is developed to improve the simulation of large lakes in regional climate models and accurately resolve the hydroclimatic interactions. Model results are compared to a wide variety of observational data and demonstrate the unique skill of the coupled 3D modeling system in reproducing trends and variability in the Great Lakes regional climate, as well as in capturing the physical characteristics of the Great Lakes by fully resolving the lake hydrodynamics. Simulations of the climatology and spatiotemporal variability of lake thermal structure and ice are significantly improved over previous coupled, 1D simulations. At seasonal and annual time scales, differences in model results are primarily observed for variables that are directly affected by lake surface temperature (e.g., evaporation, precipitation, sensible heat flux) while no significant differences are found in other atmospheric variables (e.g., solar radiation, cloud cover). Underlying physical mechanisms for the simulation improvements using GLARM are also discussed.

A Southeastern South American Daily Gridded Dataset of Observed Surface Minimum and Maximum Temperature for 1961–2000

2011 ◽  
Vol 92 (10) ◽  
pp. 1339-1346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bárbara Tencer ◽  
Matilde Rusticucci ◽  
Phil Jones ◽  
David Lister
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Climate Models ◽  
Maximum Temperature ◽  
Data Series ◽  
South American ◽  
Mean Values ◽  
Gridded Dataset ◽  
Mean Square Errors

This study presents a southeastern South American gridded dataset of daily minimum and maximum surface temperatures for 1961–2000. The data used for the gridding are observed daily data from meteorological stations in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay from the database of the European Community's Sixth Framework Programme A Europe–South America Network for Climate Change Assessment and Impact Studies in La Plata Basin (EU FP6 CLARIS LPB), with some additional data series. This gridded dataset is new for the region, not only for its spatial and temporal extension, but also for its temporal resolution. The region for which the gridded dataset has been developed is 20°–40°S, 45°–70°W, with a resolution of 0.5° latitude × 0.5° longitude. Since the methodology used produces an estimation of gridbox averages, the developed dataset is very useful for the validation of regional climate models. The comparison of gridded and observed data provides an evaluation of the usefulness of the interpolated data. According to monthly-mean values and daily variability, the methodology of interpolation developed during the EU FP6 ENSEMBLE-based predictions of climate changes and their impacts (ENSEMBLES) project for its application in Europe is also suitable for southeastern South America. Root-mean-square errors for the whole region are 1.77°C for minimum temperature and 1.13°C for maximum temperature. These errors are comparable to values obtained for Europe with the same methodology.

scholarly journals Regional Climate Modeling for the Developing World: The ICTP RegCM3 and RegCNET

2007 ◽  
Vol 88 (9) ◽  
pp. 1395-1410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy S. Pal ◽  
Filippo Giorgi ◽  
Xunqiang Bi ◽  
Nellie Elguindi ◽  
Fabien Solmon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Regional Climate Model ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Climate Modeling ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Climate Models ◽  
Regional Climate Modeling ◽  
Theoretical Physics ◽  
Research Network ◽  
Diverse Range

Regional climate models are important research tools available to scientists around the world, including in economically developing nations (EDNs). The Earth Systems Physics (ESP) group of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) maintains and distributes a state-of-the-science regional climate model called the ICTP Regional Climate Model version 3 (RegCM3), which is currently being used by a large research community for a diverse range of climate-related studies. The RegCM3 is the central, but not only, tool of the ICTP-maintained Regional Climate Research Network (RegCNET) aimed at creating south–south and north–south scientific interactions on the topic of climate and associated impacts research and modeling. In this paper, RegCNET, RegCM3, and illustrative results from RegCM3 benchmark simulations applied over south Asia, Africa, and South America are presented. It is shown that RegCM3 performs reasonably well over these regions and is therefore useful for climate studies in EDNs.

Temperature Trends in the NARCCAP Regional Climate Models

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (11) ◽  
pp. 3985-3991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa S. Bukovsky
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Climate Change ◽  
Regional Climate Models ◽  
Near Surface ◽  
The North ◽  
Temperature Trends ◽  
Scale Temperature ◽  
Climate Change Assessment

The skill of six regional climate models (RCMs) in reproducing short-term (24-yr), observed, near-surface temperature trends when driven by reanalysis is examined. The RCMs are part of the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP). If RCMs can reproduce observed temperature trends, then they are, in a way, demonstrating their ability to capture a type of climate change, which may be relevant to their ability to credibly simulate anthropogenic climate changes under future emission scenarios. This study finds that the NARCCAP RCMs can simulate some resolved-scale temperature trends, especially those seen recently in spring and, by and large, in winter. However, results in other seasons suggest that RCM performance in this measure may be dependent on the type and strength of the forcing behind the observed trends.

scholarly journals The Ongoing Need for High-Resolution Regional Climate Models: Process Understanding and Stakeholder Information

2020 ◽  
Vol 101 (5) ◽  
pp. E664-E683 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. J. Gutowski ◽  
P. A. Ullrich ◽  
A. Hall ◽  
L. R. Leung ◽  
T. A. O’Brien ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Modeling ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Climate Models ◽  
Heavy Precipitation ◽  
Regional Climate Modeling ◽  
Urban Heat Islands ◽  
Global Models ◽  
Strong Winds

ABSTRACT Regional climate modeling addresses our need to understand and simulate climatic processes and phenomena unresolved in global models. This paper highlights examples of current approaches to and innovative uses of regional climate modeling that deepen understanding of the climate system. High-resolution models are generally more skillful in simulating extremes, such as heavy precipitation, strong winds, and severe storms. In addition, research has shown that fine-scale features such as mountains, coastlines, lakes, irrigation, land use, and urban heat islands can substantially influence a region’s climate and its response to changing forcings. Regional climate simulations explicitly simulating convection are now being performed, providing an opportunity to illuminate new physical behavior that previously was represented by parameterizations with large uncertainties. Regional and global models are both advancing toward higher resolution, as computational capacity increases. However, the resolution and ensemble size necessary to produce a sufficient statistical sample of these processes in global models has proven too costly for contemporary supercomputing systems. Regional climate models are thus indispensable tools that complement global models for understanding physical processes governing regional climate variability and change. The deeper understanding of regional climate processes also benefits stakeholders and policymakers who need physically robust, high-resolution climate information to guide societal responses to changing climate. Key scientific questions that will continue to require regional climate models, and opportunities are emerging for addressing those questions.

scholarly journals The regional climate model (REG-IN) for forecasting the adaptivity of forest ecosystems in Belgrade

2019 ◽  
pp. 127-139
Author(s):  
Tatjana Ratknić ◽  
Mihailo Ratknić ◽  
Lazar Vukadinović
Keyword(s):  
Regional Climate Model ◽  
Forest Ecosystems ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Climate Modeling ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Climate Models ◽  
Regional Climate Modeling ◽  
Climate Modelling ◽  
Wide Range

Regional climate modelling with regional climate models has become a part of modern research with a wide range of applications. This article examines the latest segments in the study of regional climate modeling used to assess the adaptivity and survival of particular forest species in changing conditions. It presents the results of the regional climate model (acronym REG-IN) used to predict the adaptive capacity of forest ecosystems in Belgrade. Compared to the SXG and E-P models, the REG-IN model exhibits certain deviations due to the specific environmental conditions of the area. These data have made it possible to predict the future rate of survival of individual forest ecosystems

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document