The numerous choices between climate change scenarios makes decision-making difficult for the assessment of climate change impacts. Previous studies have used climate models to compare performance in terms of simulating observed climates or preserving model variability among scenarios. In this study, the Katsavounidis-Kuo-Zhang algorithm was applied to select representative climate change scenarios (RCCS) that preserve the variability among all climate change scenarios (CCS). The performance of multi-model ensemble of RCCS was evaluated for reference and future climates. It was found that RCCS was well suited for observations and multi model ensemble of all CCS. Using the RCCS under RCP (Representative Concentration Pathway) 8.5, the future extreme precipitation was projected. As a result, the magnitude and frequency of extreme precipitation increased towards the farther future. Especially, extreme precipitation (daily maximum precipitation of 20-year return-period) during 2070-2099, was projected to occur once every 8.3-year. The RCCS employed in this study is able to successfully represent the performance of all CCS, therefore, this approach can give opportunities managing water resources efficiently for assessment of climate change impacts.
Climate Change Impacts on Precipitation Extremes over the Columbia River Basin Based on Downscaled CMIP5 Climate Scenarios