scholarly journals Objective selection of model run from regional climate models ensemble

Author(s):  
V. Khokhlov ◽  
E. Serga ◽  
L. Neodstrelova

In this paper, a method was developed in relation to the north-western coast of the Black Sea in order to determine the optimal model run from regional climate models ensemble. As a result of climate change, which has been observed since the late 1980s in Ukraine, various natural objects changes have been also transformed. The study of such changes in the future is possible only by using runs of global or regional climate models. Moreover, the step of the spatial grid in the climate model must be comparative with the spatial size of a natural object under study. In the north-western coast of the Black Sea, climate change is characterized by increasing aridity of climate and a corresponding decrease in freshwater inflows into coastal lagoons from their catchments, making ecosystems of these lagoons sensitive and vulnerable to climate change. Using numerical models in order to study climate change impact on these natural objects requires input hydrometeorological information in the spatial grid points, the distance between which should correspond to the horizontal size of lagoons, i.e. several kilometers. In this paper, data from the scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 of the ensemble from 14 model runs with different regional climatic models of the CORDEX project were used to simulate the future changes of the temperature and precipitation regime. For each grid point and scenario, a single simulation was selected from the ensemble, which best reproduces the intra-annual changes of temperature, precipitation, and evaporation compared to the ensemble means. Despite the sufficiently large distance between the estuaries, the method allowed the selection of a single optimal model run, which shows the significant differences in spring and summer precipitation as well as year-around evaporation in the southern and northern parts of the northwestern coast of the region. This run well reproduces the relationship between temperature, precipitation, and evaporation in the southern and northern parts of the northwestern coast of the Black Sea.

2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Falk ◽  
Nils Hempelmann

Climate is the main environmental driver determining the spatial distribution of most tree species at the continental scale. We investigated the distribution change of European beech and Norway spruce due to climate change. We applied a species distribution model (SDM), driven by an ensemble of 21 regional climate models in order to study the shift of the favourability distribution of these species. SDMs were parameterized for 1971–2000, as well as 2021–2050 and 2071–2100 using the SRES scenario A1B and three physiological meaningful climate variables. Growing degree sum and precipitation sum were calculated for the growing season on a basis of daily data. Results show a general north-eastern and altitudinal shift in climatological favourability for both species, although the shift is more marked for spruce. The gain of new favourable sites in the north or in the Alps is stronger for beech compared to spruce. Uncertainty is expressed as the variance of the averaged maps and with a density function. Uncertainty in species distribution increases over time. This study demonstrates the importance of data ensembles and shows how to deal with different outcomes in order to improve impact studies by showing uncertainty of the resulting maps.


2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (11) ◽  
pp. 3985-3991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa S. Bukovsky

The skill of six regional climate models (RCMs) in reproducing short-term (24-yr), observed, near-surface temperature trends when driven by reanalysis is examined. The RCMs are part of the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP). If RCMs can reproduce observed temperature trends, then they are, in a way, demonstrating their ability to capture a type of climate change, which may be relevant to their ability to credibly simulate anthropogenic climate changes under future emission scenarios. This study finds that the NARCCAP RCMs can simulate some resolved-scale temperature trends, especially those seen recently in spring and, by and large, in winter. However, results in other seasons suggest that RCM performance in this measure may be dependent on the type and strength of the forcing behind the observed trends.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 2403
Author(s):  
Daniel Ziche ◽  
Winfried Riek ◽  
Alexander Russ ◽  
Rainer Hentschel ◽  
Jan Martin

To develop measures to reduce the vulnerability of forests to drought, it is necessary to estimate specific water balances in sites and to estimate their development with climate change scenarios. We quantified the water balance of seven forest monitoring sites in northeast Germany for the historical time period 1961–2019, and for climate change projections for the time period 2010–2100. We used the LWF-BROOK90 hydrological model forced with historical data, and bias-adjusted data from two models of the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) downscaled with regional climate models under the representative concentration pathways (RCPs) 2.6 and 8.5. Site-specific monitoring data were used to give a realistic model input and to calibrate and validate the model. The results revealed significant trends (evapotranspiration, dry days (actual/potential transpiration < 0.7)) toward drier conditions within the historical time period and demonstrate the extreme conditions of 2018 and 2019. Under RCP8.5, both models simulate an increase in evapotranspiration and dry days. The response of precipitation to climate change is ambiguous, with increasing precipitation with one model. Under RCP2.6, both models do not reveal an increase in drought in 2071–2100 compared to 1990–2019. The current temperature increase fits RCP8.5 simulations, suggesting that this scenario is more realistic than RCP2.6.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 673-687 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoine Colmet-Daage ◽  
Emilia Sanchez-Gomez ◽  
Sophie Ricci ◽  
Cécile Llovel ◽  
Valérie Borrell Estupina ◽  
...  

Abstract. The climate change impact on mean and extreme precipitation events in the northern Mediterranean region is assessed using high-resolution EuroCORDEX and MedCORDEX simulations. The focus is made on three regions, Lez and Aude located in France, and Muga located in northeastern Spain, and eight pairs of global and regional climate models are analyzed with respect to the SAFRAN product. First the model skills are evaluated in terms of bias for the precipitation annual cycle over historical period. Then future changes in extreme precipitation, under two emission scenarios, are estimated through the computation of past/future change coefficients of quantile-ranked model precipitation outputs. Over the 1981–2010 period, the cumulative precipitation is overestimated for most models over the mountainous regions and underestimated over the coastal regions in autumn and higher-order quantile. The ensemble mean and the spread for future period remain unchanged under RCP4.5 scenario and decrease under RCP8.5 scenario. Extreme precipitation events are intensified over the three catchments with a smaller ensemble spread under RCP8.5 revealing more evident changes, especially in the later part of the 21st century.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Nistahl ◽  
Tim Müller ◽  
Gerhard Riedel ◽  
Hannes Müller-Thomy ◽  
Günter Meon

&lt;p&gt;Climate change impact studies performed for Northern Germany indicate a growing demand for water storage capacity to account for flood protection, low flow augmentation, drinking and agricultural water supply. At the same time, larger storage volumes for hydropower plants can be used to cope with the demands of changing energy supply from fossil to renewable energies. To tackle these challenges for the next decades, a novel reservoir system planning instrument is developed, which consists of combined numerical models and evaluation components. It allows to model simultaneously the current interconnected infrastructure of reservoirs as well as additional planning variants (structural and operational) as preparation for climate change. This planning instrument consists of a hydrological model and a detailed reservoir operation model.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As hydrological model, the conceptual, semi-distributed version of PANTA RHEI is applied. &amp;#160;Bias-corrected regional climate models (based on the RCP 8.5 scenario) are used as meteorological input. The hydrological model is coupled with a detailed reservoir operation model that replicates the complex rules of various interconnected reservoirs based on an hourly time step including pumped storage plants, which may have a subsurface reservoir as a lower basin. Downstream of the reservoirs, the hydrological model is used for routing the reservoir outflows and simulating natural side inflows. In areas of particular interest for flood protection, the hydrological routing is substituted with 2D hydraulic models to calculate the flood risk in terms of expected annual flood damage based on resulting inundation areas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For the performance analysis, the simulation runs for all integrated modeling variants are evaluated for a reference period (1971-2000) and for future periods (2041-2070). Performance criteria involve flood protection, drinking water supply, low flow augmentation and energy production. These performance criteria will be used as stake holder information as well as a base for further optimization and ranking of the planning variants.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The combination of the hydrological model and the reservoir operation model shows a good performance of the existing complex hydraulic infrastructure using observed meteorological forcing as input. The usage of regional climate models as input shows a wide dispersion of several performance criteria, confirming the expected need for an innovative optimization scheme and the communication of the underlying uncertainties.&lt;/p&gt;


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Dobler ◽  
G. Bürger ◽  
J. Stötter

Abstract. The objectives of the present investigation are (i) to study the effects of climate change on precipitation extremes and (ii) to assess the uncertainty in the climate projections. The investigation is performed on the Lech catchment, located in the Northern Limestone Alps. In order to estimate the uncertainty in the climate projections, two statistical downscaling models as well as a number of global and regional climate models were considered. The downscaling models applied are the Expanded Downscaling (XDS) technique and the Long Ashton Research Station Weather Generator (LARS-WG). The XDS model, which is driven by analyzed or simulated large-scale synoptic fields, has been calibrated using ECMWF-interim reanalysis data and local station data. LARS-WG is controlled through stochastic parameters representing local precipitation variability, which are calibrated from station data only. Changes in precipitation mean and variability as simulated by climate models were then used to perturb the parameters of LARS-WG in order to generate climate change scenarios. In our study we use climate simulations based on the A1B emission scenario. The results show that both downscaling models perform well in reproducing observed precipitation extremes. In general, the results demonstrate that the projections are highly variable. The choice of both the GCM and the downscaling method are found to be essential sources of uncertainty. For spring and autumn, a slight tendency toward an increase in the intensity of future precipitation extremes is obtained, as a number of simulations show statistically significant increases in the intensity of 90th and 99th percentiles of precipitation on wet days as well as the 5- and 20-yr return values.


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