Regional climate change projections over southern Africa: Benefits of a high resolution climate change simulation

The southern African region is known to be a biodiversity hotspot but future climate change is likely to have a major influence on the biodiversity. To estimate the impacts of climate change on the biosphere high resolution climate information is needed for both current and future conditions. In the framework of the BIOTA South project we are therefore applying the regional climate model (RCM) REMO of the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) over the southern African region. The model is integrated for a transient climate change simulation for the time period 1960 to 2100 at 1/2 degree and 1/6 degree horizontal resolution using a double-nesting approach. The 1/6 degree simulation is the first long-term climate projection for southern Africa on such a high horizontal resolution. The boundary forcing for the 1/2 degree projection is taken from a global ECHAM5/MPIOM IPCC A1B scenario simulation. In the current study we will analyse projected changes on the hydrological cycle, thereby focusing on the Orange river catchment and on the main BIOTA research transect, which spans from the north-east corner of Namibia to the Cape region in the South. In order to quantify the impact of model resolution on the projected changes we will intercompare the two REMO simulations and the ECHAM5/MPIOM forcing data. A comparison for the high resolution REMO validation simulation and its forcing ERA40 data already revealed an added value in the representation of the seasonal rainfall characteristics for the region. The benefits of using high resolution RCM data for climate change studies will be highlighted and uncertainties introduced by the application of an RCM will be discussed.