Use of CMIP3 simulations to estimate the changes of temperature indicators over France and Europe during the 21st century

Projections of changes in temperature are essential to assess the impact of climate change on the energy supply sector as heating and cooling, energy demand highly depends on temperature. A selection of temperature indicators and their changes are examined for several simulations using SRES Emission Scenario A2 from the CMIP3 archive. We compare the present day simulated indicators to those in European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ERA40 reanalysis The results are analysed for six areas over Europe and two time periods during the 21st century. We focus our study on changes in number and duration of hot and cold events and on changes in heating degree-days and cooling degree-days, which are commonly used to estimate the weather-related variations in energy consumption. Results are presented for the different models with some comparisons to the regional model simulations from the European PRUDENCE project to evaluate uncertainties.