scholarly journals A Simple Equation for Regional Climate Change and Associated Uncertainty

2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 1589-1604 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filippo Giorgi

Abstract Simple equations are developed to express regional climate changes for the twenty-first century and associated uncertainty in terms of the global temperature change (GTC) without a dependence on the underlying emission pathways. The equations are applied to regional temperature and precipitation changes over different regions of the world, and relevant parameters are calculated using the latest multimodel ensemble of global climate change simulations. Examples are also shown of how to use the equations to develop probability density functions (PDFs) of regional climate change based on PDFs of GTC. The main advantage of these equations is that they can be used to estimate regional changes from GTC obtained either from simple and intermediate complexity models or from target CO2 stabilization concentrations.

Author(s):  
L. E. Nazarova

As a result of the statistical analysis of the meteorological and water balance data for Onego Lake watershed over the period 1950-2000, noticeable changes were detected. It was found that time series of annual air temperature, precipitation and evapotranspiration over 50-year period contains positive linear trends, but no change in total streamflow to the lake has so far followed. Potential changes in the regional climate and hydrological regime for the period 2000-2050 were estimated using the results of numerical modeling with the ECHAM4/OPYC3 model for two scenarios of the global climate change. The estimation of these data shows that a general tendency to increase of annual air temperature and precipitation will remain in the new climate Mean annual precipitation will increase about 30-50 mm, mean average annual air temperature for the next 50-years period will rise from 1.6 up to 2.7-3.0 °C. Our estimation shows that for both scenarios all water balance parameters, excluding river runoff, will increase.


1999 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 138-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Matyasovszky ◽  
T. Weidinger ◽  
J. Bartholy ◽  
Z. Barcza

Abstract. After focusing on the changes in Hungarian temperature and preeipitation during this Century, possible hydrological, agricultural and ecological consequences of a future climate change are described. These results have been obtained using a modified version of empirical downscaling techniques, developed to analyse the local effects of global climate change in a twofold concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases scenario. In addition, regional changes in temperature and precipitation were examined with the help of the more specific stochastic downscaling method. The climate of Hungary has become warmer and drier over the last Century. It is to be expected that an increasing concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases will enhance the tendency towards aridification.


2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (9) ◽  
pp. 3117-3144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Frieler ◽  
Malte Meinshausen ◽  
Matthias Mengel ◽  
Nadine Braun ◽  
William Hare

A new approach to probabilistic projections of regional climate change is introduced. It builds on the already established quasi-linear relation between global-mean temperature and regional climate change found in atmosphere–ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs). The new approach simultaneously 1) takes correlations between temperature- and precipitation-related uncertainty distributions into account, 2) enables the inclusion of predictors other than global-mean temperature, and 3) checks for the interscenario and interrun variability of the scaling relationships. This study tests the effectiveness of SOx and black carbon emissions and greenhouse gas forcings as additional predictors of precipitation changes. The future precipitation response is found to deviate substantially from the linear relationship with global-mean temperature change in some regions; thereby, the two main limitations of a simple linear scaling approach, namely having to rely on exogenous aerosol experiments (or ignoring their regional effect), and ignoring changes in scaling coefficients when approaching equilibrium conditions, are addressed. The additional predictors can markedly improve the emulation of AOGCM simulations. In some regions, variations in hydrological sensitivity (the percentage change of precipitation per degree of warming) across different scenarios can be reduced by more than 50%. Coupled to probabilistic projections of global-mean temperatures and greenhouse gas forcings, bidimensional distributions of regional temperature and precipitation changes accounting for multiple uncertainties are derived. Based on 20 Fourth Assessment Report AOGCMs (AR4 AOGCMs), probabilistic projections are provided for two representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios and 31 world regions (online database at www.pik-potsdam.de/primap/regional_temp_and_precip ). As an example application of the projections for climate adaptation and vulnerability studies, future changes in the surface mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet are computed.


2017 ◽  
pp. 42-52
Author(s):  
Debasis Poddar

Hindu Kush Himalayan region (hereafter the HKH) - with 3500 odd kilometres stretched in eight countries- is default resource generation hub for about one-fifth population of the world. The ecosystem-growing delicate these days- seems to play a critical role for the survival of flora and fauna along with the maintenance of all its life-sustaining mountain glaciers. Ten major rivers to carry forward hitherto sustainable development of these peoples fall into question now. Further, in the wake of global climate change today, the delicate HKH ecosystem becomes increasingly fragile to unfold manifold consequences and thereby take its toll on the population. And the same might turn apocalyptic in its magnanimity of irreversibledamage. Like time-bomb, thus, climate ticks to get blown off. As it is getting already too delayed for timely resort to safeguards, if still not taken care of in time, lawmakers ought to find the aftermath too late to lament for. Besides being conscious for climate discipline across the world, collective efforts on the part of all regional states together are imperative to minimize the damage. Therefore, each one has put hands together to be saved from the doomsday that appears to stand ahead to accelerate a catastrophicend, in the given speed of global climate change. As the largest Himalayan state and its central positioning at the top of the HKH, Nepal has had potential to play a criticalrole to engage regional climate change regime and thereby spearhead climate diplomacy worldwide to play regional capital of the HKH ecosystem. As regional superpower, India has had potential to usurp leadership avatar to this end. With reasoningof his own, the author pleads for better jurisprudence to attain regional environmental integrity inter se- rather than regional environmental integration alone- to defendthe vulnerable HKH ecosystem since the same constitutes common concern of humankind and much more so for themselves. Hence, to quote from Shakespeare, “To be or not to be, that is the question” is reasonable here. While states are engaged in the spree to cause mutually agreed destruction, global climate change- with deadly aftermath- poses the last and final unifier for them to turn United Nations in rhetoric sense o f the term.


2009 ◽  
Vol 106 (21) ◽  
pp. 8441-8446 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. W. Pierce ◽  
T. P. Barnett ◽  
B. D. Santer ◽  
P. J. Gleckler

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaowei Yao ◽  
Zhanqi Wang ◽  
Hua Wang

Land-use/land cover change (LUCC) is one of the fundamental causes of global environmental change. In recent years, understanding the regional climate impact of LUCC has become a hot-discussed topic worldwide. Some studies have explored LUCC impact on regional climate in specific cities, provinces, or farming areas. However, the quick-urbanized areas, which are highly influenced by human activities, have the most severe land-use changes in developing countries, and their climatic impact cannot be ignored. This study aims to identify the impact of land-use change coupled with urbanization on regional temperature and precipitation in the metropolitan areas of middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China by means of spatial analysis and numeric methods. Based on the exploration of land-use change and climate change during 1988–2008, the impact of land-use transition from non-built-up area to built-up area on temperature and precipitation was analyzed. The results indicated that the land-use conversion has affected the regional temperature with an increasing effect in the study area, while the influence on precipitation was not so significant. The results can provide useful information for spatial planning policies in consideration of regional climate change.


Author(s):  
Larisa Nazarova

The overview of climatic conditions in Karelia is based on the data from meteorological observations carried out in 1951-2009 at Roskomgidromet weather stations situated in the study area. Taking the period in question into account, the mean annual air temperature norm has increased by 0.2-0.3°C. The greatest deviation from multiyear averages of mean monthly air temperature is observed in January and March. The investigation of the changes the basic regional climate characteristics is very important in present time because the global climate is changed. The analysis the data about air temperature and precipitation, that were obtained for the different meteorological stations in the investigated region, shows that the regional climate is changed and the main tendencies are directly proportional to the change of the global characteristics.


Author(s):  
Yuchuan Lai ◽  
David A. Dzombak

AbstractAn integrated technique combining global climate model (GCM) simulation results and a statistical time series forecasting model (the autoregressive integrated moving average ARIMA model) was developed to bring together the climate change signal from GCMs to city-level historical observations as an approach to obtain location-specific temperature and precipitation projections. This approach assumes that regional temperature and precipitation time series reflect a combination of an underlying climate change signal series and a regional-deviation-from-the-signal series. An ensemble of GCMs is used to describe and provide the climate change signal, and the ARIMA model is used to model and project the regional deviation. Qualitative and quantitative assessments were conducted for evaluating the projection performance of the hybrid GCM-ARIMA (G-ARIMA) model. The results indicate that the G-ARIMA model can provide projected city-specific daily temperature and precipitation series comparable to historical observations and can have improved projection accuracy for several assessed annual indices compared to a commonly used downscaled projection product. The G-ARIMA model is subject to some limitations and uncertainties from the GCM-provided climate change signal. A notable feature of the G-ARIMA model is the efficiency with which projections can be updated when new observations become available, thus facilitating updating of regional temperature and precipitations projections. Given the increasing need for and use of location-specific climate projections in practical engineering applications, the G-ARIMA model is an option for regional temperature and precipitation projection for such applications.


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