The Sensitivity of Regional Climate Projections to SSP-Based Land Use Changes in the North American CORDEX Domain

In order to assess the combined effects of green-house-gas-induced climate change and land-use land-cover change (LULCC), we have produced regional climate model (RCM) simulations that are complementary to the North-American Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (NA-CORDEX) simulations, but with future LULCCs that are consistent with particular Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs).&#160; In standard, existing NA-CORDEX simulations, land surface characteristics are held constant at present day conditions.&#160; These new simulations, in conjunction with the NA-CORDEX simulations, will help us assess the magnitude of the changes in regional climate forced by LULCC relative to those produced by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;Understanding the magnitude of the regional climate effects of LULCC is important to the SSP-RCP scenarios framework. &#160;Whether or not the pattern of climate change resulting from a given SSP-RCP pairing is sensitive to the pattern of LULCC is an understudied problem.&#160; This work helps address this question, and will inform thinking about possible needed modifications to the scenarios framework to better account for climate-land use interactions.Accordingly, in this presentation, we will examine the state of the climate at the end of the 21st century with and without SSP-driven LULCCs in RCM simulations produced using WRF under the RCP8.5 concentration scenario.&#160; The included LULCC change effects have been created following the SSP3 and SSP5 narratives using an existing agricultural land model linked with a new long-term spatial urban land model.&#160;

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Systematic Modeling of Impacts of Land Use and Land Cover Changes on Regional Climate: A Review

Advances in Meteorology ◽

10.1155/2013/317678 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 2013 ◽

pp. 1-11 ◽

Cited By ~ 60

Author(s):

Xiangzheng Deng ◽

Chunhong Zhao ◽

Haiming Yan

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Use ◽

Land Cover ◽

Regional Climate Model ◽

Agricultural Land ◽

Climate Model ◽

Global Climate ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Surface Model ◽

Land Cover Changes

There have been tremendous changes in the global land use pattern in the past 50 years, which has directly or indirectly exerted significant influence on the global climate change. Quantitative analysis for the impacts of land use and land cover changes (LUCC) on surface climate is one of the core scientific issues to quantitatively analyze the impacts of LUCC on the climate so as to scientifically understand the influence of human activities on the climate change. This paper comprehensively analyzed the primary scientific issues about the impacts of LUCC on the regional climate and reviewed the progress in relevant researches. Firstly, it introduced the influence mechanism of LUCC on the regional climate and reviewed the progress in the researches on the biogeophysical process and biogeochemical process. Then the model simulation of effects of LUCC on the regional climate was introduced, and the development from the global climate model to the regional climate model and the integration of the improved land surface model and the regional climate model were reviewed in detail. Finally, this paper discussed the application of the regional climate models in the development and management of agricultural land and urban land.

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Climate change over the high-mountain versus plain areas: Effects on the land surface hydrologic budget in the Alpine area and northern Italy

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences ◽

10.5194/hess-22-3331-2018 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 22 (6) ◽

pp. 3331-3350 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Claudio Cassardo ◽

Seon Ki Park ◽

Marco Galli ◽

Sungmin O

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Surface ◽

Climate Model ◽

Human Life ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Northern Italy ◽

Climate Projections ◽

High Mountain ◽

Intergovernmental Panel ◽

Alpine Area

Abstract. Climate change may intensify during the second half of the current century. Changes in temperature and precipitation can exert a significant impact on the regional hydrologic cycle. Because the land surface serves as the hub of interactions among the variables constituting the energy and water cycles, evaluating the land surface processes is essential to detail the future climate. In this study, we employ a trusted soil–vegetation–atmosphere transfer scheme, called the University of Torino model of land Processes Interaction with Atmosphere (UTOPIA), in offline simulations to quantify the changes in hydrologic components in the Alpine area and northern Italy, between the period of 1961–1990 and 2071–2100. The regional climate projections are obtained by the Regional Climate Model version 3 (RegCM3) via two emission scenarios – A2 and B2 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. The hydroclimate projections, especially from A2, indicate that evapotranspiration generally increases, especially over the plain areas, and consequently the surface soil moisture decreases during summer, falling below the wilting point threshold for an extra month. In the high-mountain areas, due to the earlier snowmelt, the land surface becomes snowless for an additional month. The annual mean number of dry (wet) days increases remarkably (slightly), thus increasing the risk of severe droughts, and slightly increasing the risk of floods coincidently. Our results have serious implications for human life, including agricultural production, water sustainability, and general infrastructures, over the Alpine and adjacent plain areas and can be used to plan the managements of water resources, floods, irrigation, forestry, hydropower, and many other relevant activities.

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Future humidity extremes in an urban-rural context - using regional climate model projections down to convection permitting scales for Berlin

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12054 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Gaby S. Langendijk ◽

Diana Rechid ◽

Daniela Jacob

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Climate Models ◽

Climate Model ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Climate Change Impacts ◽

Regional Climate Models ◽

Climate Projections ◽

Climate Data ◽

Urban Rural

Urban areas are prone to climate change impacts. A transition towards sustainable and climate-resilient urban areas is relying heavily on useful, evidence-based climate information on urban scales. However, current climate data and information produced by urban or climate models are either not scale compliant for cities, or do not cover essential parameters and/or urban-rural interactions under climate change conditions. Furthermore, although e.g. the urban heat island may be better understood, other phenomena, such as moisture change, are little researched. Our research shows the potential of regional climate models, within the EURO-CORDEX framework, to provide climate projections and information on urban scales for 11km and 3km grid size. The city of Berlin is taken as a case-study. The results on the 11km spatial scale show that the regional climate models simulate a distinct difference between Berlin and its surroundings for temperature and humidity related variables. There is an increase in urban dry island conditions in Berlin towards the end of the 21st century. To gain a more detailed understanding of climate change impacts, extreme weather conditions were investigated under a 2&#176;C global warming and further downscaled to the 3km scale. This enables the exploration of differences of the meteorological processes between the 11km and 3km scales, and the implications for urban areas and its surroundings. The overall study shows the potential of regional climate models to provide climate change information on urban scales.

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Flood risk assessment methodology for planning under climate change scenarios and the corresponding change in land cover

Journal of Water and Climate Change ◽

10.2166/wcc.2019.016 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (4) ◽

pp. 1370-1382 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Asma Hanif ◽

Ashwin Dhanasekar ◽

Anthony Keene ◽

Huishu Li ◽

Kenneth Carlson

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Model ◽

Global Climate Model ◽

The United States ◽

Army Corps ◽

Climate Projections ◽

Climate Change Scenarios ◽

Rcp Scenarios ◽

Daily Precipitation Data ◽

Time Frames

Abstract Projected climate change impacts on the hydrological regime and corresponding flood risks were examined for the years 2030 (near-term) and 2050 (long-term), under representative concentration pathways (RCP) 4.5 (moderate) and 8.5 (high) emission scenarios. The United States Army Corps of Engineers' (USACE) Hydrologic Engineering Center's Hydrologic Modeling System was used to simulate the complete hydrologic processes of the various dendritic watershed systems and USACEs' Hydrologic Engineering Center's River Analysis System hydraulic model was used for the two-dimensional unsteady flow flood calculations. Climate projections are based on recent global climate model simulations developed for the International Panel on Climate Change, Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5. Hydrographs for frequent (high-recurrence interval) storms were derived from 30-year historical daily precipitation data and decadal projections for both time frames and RCP scenarios. Since the climate projections for each scenario only represented ten years of data, 100-year or 500-year storms cannot be derived. Hence, this novel approach of identifying frequent storms is used as an indicator to compare across the various time frames and climate scenarios. Hydrographs were used to generate inundation maps and results are used to identify vulnerabilities and formulate adaptation strategies to flooding at 43 locations worldwide.

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Spatially resolved past and projected changes of the suitable thermal habitat of North Sea cod (Gadus morhua) under climate change

ICES Journal of Marine Science ◽

10.1093/icesjms/fsz132 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 76 (7) ◽

pp. 2389-2403

Author(s):

Ismael Núñez-Riboni ◽

Marc H Taylor ◽

Alexander Kempf ◽

Miriam Püts ◽

Moritz Mathis

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

North Sea ◽

Gadus Morhua ◽

Climate Model ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Change Scenario ◽

Intergovernmental Panel ◽

Southern Bight ◽

Spatially Resolved ◽

The North

Abstract Previous studies have identified changes in habitat temperature as a major factor leading to the geographical displacement of North Sea cod in the last decades. However, the degree to which thermal suitability is presently changing in different regions of the North Sea is still unclear, or if temperature alone (or together with fishery) is responsible for this displacement. In this study, the spatial distribution of different life stages of cod was modelled from 1967 to 2015. The model is fit point-to-point, spatially resolved at scales of 20 km. The results show that suitability has decreased south of 56°N (>12% in the Southern Bight) and increased north of it (with maximum of roughly 10% in southern Skagerrak). Future changes to suitability were estimated throughout the century using temperature projections from a regional climate model under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenario RCP8.5. The results show that southern Skagerrak, the central and northern North Sea and the edge of the Norwegian trench will remain thermally suitable for North Sea cod throughout the century. This detailed geographical representation of thermally suitable key zones for North Sea cod under climate change is revealed for the first time through the improved resolution of this analysis.

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Projected Changes of Precipitation IDF Curves for Short Duration under Climate Change in Central Vietnam

Hydrology ◽

10.3390/hydrology5030033 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

pp. 33 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Nguyen Tien Thanh ◽

Luca Dutto Aldo Remo

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Model ◽

Southern Oscillation ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Extreme Weather Events ◽

Climate Data ◽

Rcp Scenarios ◽

Central Vietnam ◽

Idf Curves ◽

Projected Changes

In future years, extreme weather events are expected to frequently increase due to climate change, especially in the combination of climate change and events of El Niño–Southern Oscillation. This pays special attention to the construction of intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) curves at a tempo-spatial scale of sub-daily and sub-grid under a context of climate change. The reason for this is that IDF curves represent essential means to study effects on the performance of drainage systems, damps, dikes and reservoirs. Therefore, the objective of this study is to present an approach to construct future IDF curves with high temporo-spatial resolutions under climate change in central Vietnam, using the case of VuGia-ThuBon. The climate data of historical and future from a regional climate model RegCM4 forced by three global models MPI-ESM-MR, IPSL-CM5A-LR and ICHEC-EC-EARTH are used to re-grid the resolution of 10 km × 10 km grid spacing from 25 km × 25 km on the base of bilinear interpolation. A bias correction method is then applied to the finest resolution of a hydrostatic climate model for an ensemble of simulations. Furthermore, the IDF curves for short durations of precipitation are constructed for the historical climate and future climates under two representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, based on terms of correlation factors. The major findings show that the projected precipitation changes are expected to significantly increase by about 10 to 30% under the scenarios of RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. The projected changes of a maximum of 1-, 2-, and 3-days precipitation are expected to increase by about 30–300 mm/day. More importantly, for all return periods (i.e., 10, 20, 50, 100, and 200 years), IDF curves completely constructed for short durations of precipitation at sub-daily show an increase in intensities for the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios.

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Climate Change Impact on the Frequency of Hydrometeorological Extremes in the Island of Crete

Water ◽

10.3390/w11030587 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (3) ◽

pp. 587 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Evdokia Tapoglou ◽

Anthi Vozinaki ◽

Ioannis Tsanis

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Frequency Analysis ◽

Extreme Precipitation ◽

Climate Model ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Standardized Precipitation Index ◽

Hydrological Drought ◽

Drought Indices ◽

Rcp Scenarios ◽

The Impact

Frequency analysis on extreme hydrological and meteorological events under the effect of climate change is performed in the island of Crete. Data from Regional Climate Model simulations (RCMs) that follow three Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP8.5) are used in the analysis. The analysis was performed for the 1985–2100 time period, divided into three equal-duration time slices (1985–2010, 2025–2050, and 2075–2100). Comparison between the results from the three time slices for the different RCMs under different RCP scenarios indicate that drought events are expected to increase in the future. The meteorological and hydrological drought indices, relative Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardized Runoff index (SRI), are used to identify the number of drought events for each RCM. Results from extreme precipitation, extreme flow, meteorological and hydrological drought frequency analysis over Crete show that the impact of climate change on the magnitude of 100 years return period extreme events will also increase, along with the magnitude of extreme precipitation and flow events.

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Urbanization-Driven Changes in Land-Climate Dynamics: A Case Study of Haihe River Basin, China

Remote Sensing ◽

10.3390/rs12172701 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (17) ◽

pp. 2701

Author(s):

Zhouyuan Li ◽

Yanjie Xu ◽

Yingbao Sun ◽

Mengfan Wu ◽

Bin Zhao

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

River Basin ◽

Land Surface ◽

Agricultural Land ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Climate Dynamics ◽

Haihe River Basin ◽

Haihe River ◽

Land Use And Cover

Urbanization changes the land surface environment, which alters the regional climate system. In this study, we took the Haihe River Basin in China as a case study area, as it is highly populated and experienced rapid urbanization from 2000–2015. We investigated how land use and cover change (LUCC) was driven by urban land development affects land-climate dynamics. From 2000–2015, we collected data from the land use and cover database, the remote sensing database of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) series, and the meteorological database to process and generate regional datasets for LUCC maps. We organized data by years aligned with the selected indicators of land surface, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), albedo, and land surface temperature (LST), as well as of regional climate, cloud water content (CWC), and precipitation (P). The assembled datasets were processed to perform statistical analysis and conduct structural equation modelling (SEM). Based on eco-climatology principles and the biophysical process in the land-climate dynamics, we made assumptions on how the indicators connected to each other. Moreover, we testified and quantified them in SEM. LUCC results found that from 2000–2015 the urban area proportion increased by 214% (2.20–6.91%), while the agricultural land decreased by 7.2% (53.05–49.25%) and the forest increased by 4.3% (10.02–10.45%), respectively. This demonstrated how cropland intensification and afforestation happened in the urbanizing basin. SEM results showed that the forest had both positive and negative effects on the regional hydrological cycle. The agricultural land, grassland, and shrub had indirect effects on the P via different biophysical functions of LST. The overall effects of urbanization on regional precipitation was positive (pathway correlation coefficient = 0.25). The interpretation of how urbanization drives LUCC and alters regional climate were herein discussed in different aspects of socioeconomic development, biophysical processes, and urbanization-related atmospheric effects. We provided suggestions for further possible research on monitoring and assessment, putting forth recommendations to advance sustainability via land planning and management, including agricultural land conservation, paying more attention to the quality growth of forest rather than the merely area expansion, integrating the interdisciplinary approach, and assessing climatic risk for extreme precipitation and urban flooding.

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Toward Assessing NARCCAP Regional Climate Model Credibility for the North American Monsoon: Future Climate Simulations*

Journal of Climate ◽

10.1175/jcli-d-14-00695.1 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 28 (17) ◽

pp. 6707-6728 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Melissa S. Bukovsky ◽

Carlos M. Carrillo ◽

David J. Gochis ◽

Dorit M. Hammerling ◽

Rachel R. McCrary ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

North American ◽

Southern Oscillation ◽

Monsoon Season ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Global Climate Models ◽

North American Monsoon ◽

The North ◽

Climate Simulations ◽

Projected Changes

Abstract This study presents climate change results from the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) suite of dynamically downscaled simulations for the North American monsoon system in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. The focus is on changes in precipitation and the processes driving the projected changes from the regional climate simulations and their driving coupled atmosphere–ocean global climate models. The effect of known biases on the projections is also examined. Overall, there is strong ensemble agreement for a large decrease in precipitation during the monsoon season; however, this agreement and the magnitude of the ensemble-mean change is likely deceiving, as the greatest decreases are produced by the simulations that are the most biased in the baseline/current climate. Furthermore, some of the greatest decreases in precipitation are being driven by changes in processes/phenomena that are less credible (e.g., changes in El Niño–Southern Oscillation, when it is initially not simulated well). In other simulations, the processes driving the precipitation change may be plausible, but other biases (e.g., biases in low-level moisture or precipitation intensity) appear to be affecting the magnitude of the projected changes. The most and least credible simulations are clearly identified, while the other simulations are mixed in their abilities to produce projections of value.

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