Vulnerability of Swiss lakes to climate change along an altitudinal gradient

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Love Råman Vinnå ◽  
Iselin Medhaug ◽  
Martin Schmid ◽  
Damien Bouffard
Keyword(s):  
Altitudinal Gradient ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Large Fraction ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Climate Scenarios ◽  
Mountain Regions ◽  
Lake Model ◽  
Atmospheric Phenomena ◽  
The Impact

<p>Studies investigating the influence of 21<sup>st</sup> century climate warming on lakes along altitudinal gradients has been obscured by complex local atmospheric phenomena, insufficiently resolved by regional climate model grids in mountain regions. Here we used locally downscaled climate models to force the physical lake model Simstrat under three future climate scenarios to investigate the impact on 29 Swiss lakes, varying in size and located along an altitudinal gradient. Results predict significant changes linked to altitude in duration of ice-cover, and stratification. Lower and especially mid altitude lakes risk changes in mixing regimes. A large fraction of previously dimictic lakes shift to a monomictic regime under RCP8.5. Analysis further indicates that for many lakes climate related change can be limited by adhering to RCP2.6.</p>

scholarly journals The vulnerability of lakes to climate change along an altitudinal gradient

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Love Råman Vinnå ◽  
Iselin Medhaug ◽  
Martin Schmid ◽  
Damien Bouffard
Keyword(s):  
Altitudinal Gradient ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Future Scenarios ◽  
Case Scenario ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Lake Model ◽  
Atmospheric Phenomena ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Substantial Change ◽  
Mean Annual Air Temperature

AbstractStudies of future 21st century climate warming in lakes along altitudinal gradients have been partially obscured by local atmospheric phenomena unresolved in climate models. Here we forced the physical lake model Simstrat with locally downscaled climate models under three future scenarios to investigate the impact on 29 Swiss lakes, varying in size along an altitudinal gradient. Results from the worst-case scenario project substantial change at the end of the century in duration of ice-cover at mid to high altitude (−2 to −107 days), stratification duration (winter −17 to −84 days, summer −2 to 73 days), while lower and especially mid altitude (present day mean annual air temperature from 9 °C to 3 °C) dimictic lakes risk shift to monomictic regimes (seven out of the eight lakes). Analysis further indicates that for many lakes shifts in mixing regime can be avoided by adhering to the most stringent scenario.

scholarly journals Improving Climate Sensitivity of Deep Lakes within a Regional Climate Model and Its Impact on Simulated Climate

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (8) ◽  
pp. 2886-2911 ◽  
Author(s):  
Val Bennington ◽  
Michael Notaro ◽  
Kathleen D. Holman
Keyword(s):  
Regional Climate Model ◽  
Interannual Variability ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Global Climate Models ◽  
Deep Lakes ◽  
Community Land Model ◽  
Lake Model ◽  
Lake Temperature

Abstract Regional climate models aim to improve local climate simulations by resolving topography, vegetation, and land use at a finer resolution than global climate models. Lakes, particularly large and deep lakes, are local features that significantly alter regional climate. The Hostetler lake model, a version of which is currently used in the Community Land Model, performs poorly in deep lakes when coupled to the regional climate of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) Regional Climate Model, version 4 (RegCM4). Within the default RegCM4 model, the lake fails to properly stratify, stifling the model’s ability to capture interannual variability in lake temperature and ice cover. Here, the authors improve modeled lake stratification and eddy diffusivity while correcting errors in the ice model. The resulting simulated lake shows improved stratification and interannual variability in lake ice and temperature. The lack of circulation and explicit mixing continues to stifle the model’s ability to simulate lake mixing events and variability in timing of stratification and destratification. The changes to modeled lake conditions alter seasonal means in sea level pressure, temperature, and low-level winds in the entire model domain, highlighting the importance of lake model selection and improvement for coupled simulations. Interestingly, changes to winter and spring snow cover and albedo impact spring warming. Unsurprisingly, regional climate variability is not significantly altered by an increase in lake temperature variability.

scholarly journals The Impact of Climate Change on Material Degradation Criteria in Heritage over Iran: Regional Climate Model Evaluation

2020 ◽  
Vol 172 ◽  
pp. 02006
Author(s):  
Hamed Hedayatnia ◽  
Marijke Steeman ◽  
Nathan Van Den Bossche
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Climate Models ◽  
Salt Crystallization ◽  
Climate Modelling ◽  
Impact Of Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Effects ◽  
The Impact

Understanding how climate change accelerates or slows down the process of material deterioration is the first step towards assessing adaptive approaches for the preservation of historical heritage. Analysis of the climate change effects on the degradation risk assessment parameters like salt crystallization cycles is of crucial importance when considering mitigating actions. Due to the vulnerability of cultural heritage in Iran to climate change, the impact of this phenomenon on basic parameters plus variables more critical to building damage like salt crystallization index needs to be analyzed. Regional climate modelling projections can be used to asses the impact of climate change effects on heritage. The output of two different regional climate models, the ALARO-0 model (Ghent University-RMI, Belgium) and the REMO model (HZG-GERICS, Germany), is analyzed to find out which model is more adapted to the region. So the focus of this research is mainly on the evaluation to determine the reliability of both models over the region. For model validation, a comparison between model data and observations was performed in 4 different climate zones for 30 years to find out how reliable these models are in the field of building pathology.

scholarly journals Large-scale atmospheric circulation biases and changes in global climate model simulations and their importance for regional climate scenarios: a case study for West-Central Europe

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 7415-7455 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. P. van Ulden ◽  
G. J. van Oldenborgh
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Climate Scenarios ◽  
Model Simulations ◽  
Circulation Changes

Abstract. The credibility of regional climate change predictions for the 21st century depends on the ability of climate models to simulate global and regional circulations in a realistic manner. To investigate this issue, a large set of global coupled climate model experiments prepared for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been studied. First we compared 20th century model simulations of longterm mean monthly sea level pressure patterns with ERA-40. We found a wide range in performance. Many models performed well on a global scale. For northern midlatitudes and Europe many models showed large errors, while other models simulated realistic pressure fields. Next we focused on the monthly mean climate of West-Central Europe in the 20th century. In this region the climate depends strongly on the circulation. Westerlies bring temperate weather from the Atlantic Ocean, while easterlies bring cold spells in winter and hot weather in summer. In order to be credible for this region, a climate model has to show realistic circulation statistics in the current climate, and a response of temperature and precipitation variations to circulation variations that agrees with observations. We found that even models with a realistic mean pressure pattern over Europe still showed pronounced deviations from the observed circulation distributions. In particular, the frequency distributions of the strength of westerlies appears to be difficult to simulate well. This contributes substantially to biases in simulated temperatures and precipitation, which have to be accounted for when comparing model simulations with observations. Finally we considered changes in climate simulations between the end of the 20th century and the end of the 21st century. Here we found that changes in simulated circulation statistics play an important role in climate scenarios. For temperature, the warm extremes in summer and cold extremes in winter are most sensitive to changes in circulation, because these extremes depend strongly on the simulated frequency of eastery flow. For precipitation, we found that circulation changes have a substantial influence, both on mean changes and on changes in the probability of wet extremes and of long dry spells. Because we do not know how reliable climate models are in their predictions of circulation changes, climate change predictions for Europe are as yet uncertain in many aspects.

scholarly journals Lake and climate models linkage: a 3-D hydrodynamic contribution

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 57-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. F. Leon ◽  
D. Lam ◽  
W. Schertzer ◽  
D. Swayne
Keyword(s):  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Climate Models ◽  
Heat Fluxes ◽  
Large Lakes ◽  
Atmospheric Sciences ◽  
Lake Model ◽  
Realistic Representation ◽  
Heat Exchanges

Abstract. Under a Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS) project, targeted to study the feasibility to link regional climate models with lake models, one of the tasks was to consider such a coupling in large lakes. The objective is to provide detailed information on temperature and circulation distributions of the lake to take into account the spatial variability for temperature and the heat exchange through the water's surface. The major contribution of this work is focused on realistic representation of the heat fluxes and temperature distributions to and from lakes especially during the thermally stratified ice-free periods. This paper presents the detailed 3-D ELCOM model applied in Lake Erie in order to produce, at the surface layer of the lake, the spatial distribution of temperature and heat exchanges that eventually can be coupled with a regional climate model (CRCM). Preliminary results will be presented on how this lake model may improve the regional climate models, which currently do not consider such large lake circulation effects.

scholarly journals An observation-constrained multi-physics WRF ensemble for simulating European mega heat waves

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 2285-2298 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. I. Stegehuis ◽  
R. Vautard ◽  
P. Ciais ◽  
A. J. Teuling ◽  
D. G. Miralles ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heat Wave ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Shortwave Radiation ◽  
Cold Bias ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Many climate models have difficulties in properly reproducing climate extremes, such as heat wave conditions. Here we use the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) regional climate model with a large combination of different atmospheric physics schemes, in combination with the NOAH land-surface scheme, with the goal of detecting the most sensitive physics and identifying those that appear most suitable for simulating the heat wave events of 2003 in western Europe and 2010 in Russia. In total, 55 out of 216 simulations combining different atmospheric physical schemes have a temperature bias smaller than 1 °C during the heat wave episodes, the majority of simulations showing a cold bias of on average 2–3 °C. Conversely, precipitation is mostly overestimated prior to heat waves, and shortwave radiation is slightly overestimated. Convection is found to be the most sensitive atmospheric physical process impacting simulated heat wave temperature across four different convection schemes in the simulation ensemble. Based on these comparisons, we design a reduced ensemble of five well performing and diverse scheme configurations, which may be used in the future to perform heat wave analysis and to investigate the impact of climate change during summer in Europe.

Cold Season Performance of the NU-WRF Regional Climate Model in the Great Lakes Region

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Notaro ◽  
Yafang Zhong ◽  
Pengfei Xue ◽  
Christa Peters-Lidard ◽  
Carlos Cruz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Great Lakes ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Climate Models ◽  
Cold Season ◽  
Cold Bias ◽  
Great Lakes Region ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Lake Model

AbstractAs Earth’s largest collection of fresh water, the Laurentian Great Lakes have enormous ecological and socio-economic value. Their basin has become a regional hotspot of climatic and limnological change, potentially threatening its vital natural resources. Consequentially, there is a need to assess the current state of climate models regarding their performance across the Great Lakes region and develop the next generation of high-resolution regional climate models to address complex limnological processes and lake-atmosphere interactions. In response to this need, the current paper focuses on the generation and analysis of a 20-member ensemble of 3-km National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)-Unified Weather Research and Forecasting (NU-WRF) simulations for the 2014-2015 cold season. The study aims to identify the model’s strengths and weaknesses; optimal configuration for the region; and the impacts of different physics parameterizations, coupling to a 1D lake model, time-variant lake-surface temperatures, and spectral nudging. Several key biases are identified in the cold-season simulations for the Great Lakes region, including an atmospheric cold bias that is amplified by coupling to a 1D lake model but diminished by applying the Community Atmosphere Model radiation scheme and Morrison microphysics scheme; an excess precipitation bias; anomalously early initiation of fall lake turnover and subsequent cold lake bias; excessive and overly persistent lake ice cover; and insufficient evaporation over Lakes Superior and Huron. The research team is currently addressing these key limitations by coupling NU-WRF to a 3D lake model in support of the next generation of regional climate models for the critical Great Lakes Basin.

scholarly journals Sensitivity Study of Different RegCM4.4 Model Set-Ups – Recent Results from the TVRegCM Experiment

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 17-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hristo Chervenkov ◽  
Vladimir Ivanov ◽  
Georgi Gadzhev ◽  
Kostadin Ganev
Keyword(s):  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Patterns ◽  
Monthly Basis ◽  
Global Circulation Models ◽  
Model Set ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The oncoming climate changes will exert influence on the ecosystems, on all branches of the international economy, and on the quality of life. Global Circulation Models (GCMs) are the most widespread and successful tools employed for both numerical weather forecast and climate research since the 1980s. However, growing demands on accurate and reliable information on regional and sub-regional scale are not directly met by relatively coarse resolution global models, mainly due to the excessive costs affiliated with the use of the model in very high resolution. Regional Climate Models (RCMs) are important instruments used for downscaling climate simulations from GCMs. Main aim of the numerical experiment Tuning an Validation of Regional Climate Model (RegCM-TVRegCM) is to quantify the impact of some tunable factors in the RegCM set-up on the model outputs. Thus, on the first stage of the study, the skill of 20 different model configurations in representing the basic spatial and temporal patterns of the Southeast European (SE) climate for the period 1999-2009, is evaluated. Based on these outcomes, the present work is dedicated on more detailed inspection of the model set-ups with recognizable better performance. The Pearson’s correlation coefficient between the time series of the temperature and precipitation of the 6 most promising model set-ups and the E-OBS on monthly basis are calculated. The main conclusion is that this test does not reveal single one model set-up that definitely over performs the other considered ones.

scholarly journals The impact of regional climate model formulation and resolution on simulated precipitation in Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 377-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minchao Wu ◽  
Grigory Nikulin ◽  
Erik Kjellström ◽  
Danijel Belušić ◽  
Colin Jones ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Horizontal Resolution ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Primary Control ◽  
Model Formulation ◽  
Simulated Precipitation ◽  
Mean Climate ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. We investigate the impact of model formulation and horizontal resolution on the ability of Regional Climate Models (RCMs) to simulate precipitation in Africa. Two RCMs (SMHI-RCA4 and HCLIM38-ALADIN) are utilized for downscaling the ERA-Interim reanalysis over Africa at four different resolutions: 25, 50, 100, and 200 km. In addition to the two RCMs, two different parameter settings (configurations) of the same RCA4 are used. By contrasting different downscaling experiments, it is found that model formulation has the primary control over many aspects of the precipitation climatology in Africa. Patterns of spatial biases in seasonal mean precipitation are mostly defined by model formulation, while the magnitude of the biases is controlled by resolution. In a similar way, the phase of the diurnal cycle in precipitation is completely controlled by model formulation (convection scheme), while its amplitude is a function of resolution. However, the impact of higher resolution on the time-mean climate is mixed. An improvement in one region/season (e.g. reduction in dry biases) often corresponds to a deterioration in another region/season (e.g. amplification of wet biases). At the same time, higher resolution leads to a more realistic distribution of daily precipitation. Consequently, even if the time-mean climate is not always greatly sensitive to resolution, the realism of the simulated precipitation increases as resolution increases. Our results show that improvements in the ability of RCMs to simulate precipitation in Africa compared to their driving reanalysis in many cases are simply related to model formulation and not necessarily to higher resolution. Such model formulation related improvements are strongly model dependent and can, in general, not be considered as an added value of downscaling.

scholarly journals Impact of climate change on water availability in the Oueme catchment at the outlet of the Save's bridge (Benin, West Africa)

2021 ◽  
Vol 384 ◽  
pp. 255-260
Author(s):  
Amedée Chabi ◽  
Esdras Babadjidé Josué Zandagba ◽  
Ezekiel Obada ◽  
Eliezer Iboukoun Biao ◽  
Eric Adéchina Alamou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Availability ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Hydrological Models ◽  
Impact Of Climate Change ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. One of the major threats to water resources today remains climate change. The objective of this study is to assess the impact of climate change on water availability in Oueme catchment at Savè. Precipitation provided by three regional climate models (RCMs) was analyzed. Bias in these data was first corrected using the Empirical Quantile Mapping (EQM) method be for etheir use as input to hydrological models. To achieve the objective, six hydrological models were used (AWBM, ModHyPMA, HBV, GR4J, SimHyd and Hymod). In projection, the results showed that the AWBM model appears to be the best. The multi-model approach further improves model performance, with the best obtained with combinations of the models AWBM-ModHyPMA-HBV. The AWBM model showed a fairly good capability for simulating flows in the basin with only HIRHAM5 climate model data as input. Therefore, the simulation with the HIRHAM5 data as inputs to the five (05) hydrological models, showed flows that vary at the horizons (2025, 2055 and 2085) under the scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). Indeed, this variation is largely due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document