Regional climate models reduce biases of global models and project smaller European summer warming
Abstract
The assessment of regional climate change and the associated planning of adaptation and response strategies are often based on complex model chains. Typically, these model chains employ global and regional climate models (GCMs and RCMs), as well as one or several impact models. It is a common belief that the errors in such model chains behave approximately additive, thus the uncertainty should increase with each modeling step. If this hypothesis were true, the application of RCMs would not lead to any intrinsic improvement (beyond higher-resolution detail) of the GCM results. Here, we investigate the bias patterns (offset during the historical period against observations) and climate change signals of two RCMs that have downscaled a comprehensive set of GCMs following the EURO-CORDEX framework. The two RCMs reduce the biases of the driving GCMs, reduce the spread and modify the amplitude of the GCM projected climate change signal. The GCM projected summer warming at the end of the century is substantially reduced by both RCMs. These results are important, as the projected summer warming and its likely impact on the water cycle are among the most serious concerns regarding European climate change.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.A22F..07S
- Keywords:
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- 3305 Climate change and variability;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 3355 Regional modeling;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 1622 Earth system modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1637 Regional climate change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE