scholarly journals PLASIM-ENTSem: a spatio-temporal emulator of future climate change for impacts assessment

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 3349-3380 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. B. Holden ◽  
N. R. Edwards ◽  
P. H. Garthwaite ◽  
K. Fraedrich ◽  
F. Lunkeit ◽  
...  

Abstract. Many applications in the evaluation of climate impacts and environmental policy require detailed spatio-temporal projections of future climate. To capture feedbacks from impacted natural or socio-economic systems requires interactive two-way coupling but this is generally computationally infeasible with even moderately complex general circulation models (GCMs). Dimension reduction using emulation is one solution to this problem, demonstrated here with the GCM PLASIM-ENTS. Our approach generates temporally evolving spatial patterns of climate variables, considering multiple modes of variability in order to capture non-linear feedbacks. The emulator provides a 188-member ensemble of decadally and spatially resolved (~ 5° resolution) seasonal climate data in response to an arbitrary future CO2 concentration and radiative forcing scenario. We present the PLASIM-ENTS coupled model, the construction of its emulator from an ensemble of transient future simulations, an application of the emulator methodology to produce heating and cooling degree-day projections, and the validation of the results against empirical data and higher-complexity models. We also demonstrate the application to estimates of sea-level rise and associated uncertainty.

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 433-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. B. Holden ◽  
N. R. Edwards ◽  
P. H. Garthwaite ◽  
K. Fraedrich ◽  
F. Lunkeit ◽  
...  

Abstract. Many applications in the evaluation of climate impacts and environmental policy require detailed spatio-temporal projections of future climate. To capture feedbacks from impacted natural or socio-economic systems requires interactive two-way coupling, but this is generally computationally infeasible with even moderately complex general circulation models (GCMs). Dimension reduction using emulation is one solution to this problem, demonstrated here with the GCM PLASIM-ENTS (Planet Simulator coupled with the efficient numerical terrestrial scheme). Our approach generates temporally evolving spatial patterns of climate variables, considering multiple modes of variability in order to capture non-linear feedbacks. The emulator provides a 188-member ensemble of decadally and spatially resolved (~ 5° resolution) seasonal climate data in response to an arbitrary future CO2 concentration and non-CO2 radiative forcing scenario. We present the PLASIM-ENTS coupled model, the construction of its emulator from an ensemble of transient future simulations, an application of the emulator methodology to produce heating and cooling degree-day projections, the validation of the simulator (with respect to empirical data) and the validation of the emulator (with respect to high-complexity models). We also demonstrate the application to estimates of sea-level rise and associated uncertainty.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Sha ◽  
Zhong-Liang Wang ◽  
Yue Zhao ◽  
Yan-Xue Xu ◽  
Xue Li

Abstract The vulnerability of the natural water system in cold areas to future climate change is of great concern. A coupled model approach was applied in the headwater watershed area of Yalu River in the northeastern part of China to estimate the response of hydrological processes to future climate change with moderate data. The stochastic Long Ashton Research Station Weather Generator was used to downscale the results of general circulation models to generate synthetic daily weather series in the 2050s and 2080s under various projected scenarios, which were applied as input data of the Generalized Watershed Loading Functions hydrological model for future hydrological process estimations. The results showed that future wetter and hotter weather conditions would have positive impacts on the watershed runoff yields but negative impacts on the watershed groundwater flow yields. The freezing period in winter would be shortened with earlier snowmelt peaks in spring. These would result in less snow cover in winter and shift the monthly allocations of streamflow with more yields in March but less in April and May, which should be of great concern for future local management. The proposed approach of the coupled model application is effective and can be used in other similar areas.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1724-1747 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Allani ◽  
R. Mezzi ◽  
A. Zouabi ◽  
R. Béji ◽  
F. Joumade-Mansouri ◽  
...  

Abstract This study evaluates the impacts of climate change on water supply and demand of the Nebhana dam system. Future climate change scenarios were obtained from five general circulation models (GCMs) of CMIP5 under RCP 4.5 and 8.5 emission scenarios for the time periods, 2021–2040, 2041–2060 and 2061–2080. Statistical downscaling was applied using LARS-WG. The GR2M hydrological model was calibrated, validated and used as input to the WEAP model to assess future water availability. Expected crop growth cycle lengths were estimated using a growing degree days model. By means of the WEAP-MABIA method, projected crop and irrigation water requirements were estimated. Results show an average increase in annual ETo of 6.1% and a decrease in annual rainfall of 11.4%, leading to a 24% decrease in inflow. Also, crops' growing cycles will decrease from 5.4% for wheat to 31% for citrus trees. The same tendency is observed for ETc. Concerning irrigation requirement, variations are more moderated depending on RCPs and time periods, and is explained by rainfall and crop cycle duration variations. As for demand and supply, results currently show that supply does not meet the system demand. Climate change could worsen the situation unless better planning of water surface use is done.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 8335-8364 ◽  
Author(s):  
X.-Z. Liang ◽  
F. Zhang

Abstract. A cloud–aerosol–radiation (CAR) ensemble modeling system has been developed to incorporate the largest choices of alternate parameterizations for cloud properties (cover, water, radius, optics, geometry), aerosol properties (type, profile, optics), radiation transfers (solar, infrared), and their interactions. These schemes form the most comprehensive collection currently available in the literature, including those used by the world's leading general circulation models (GCMs). CAR provides a unique framework to determine (via intercomparison across all schemes), reduce (via optimized ensemble simulations), and attribute specific key factors for (via physical process sensitivity analyses) the model discrepancies and uncertainties in representing greenhouse gas, aerosol, and cloud radiative forcing effects. This study presents a general description of the CAR system and illustrates its capabilities for climate modeling applications, especially in the context of estimating climate sensitivity and uncertainty range caused by cloud–aerosol–radiation interactions. For demonstration purposes, the evaluation is based on several CAR standalone and coupled climate model experiments, each comparing a limited subset of the full system ensemble with up to 896 members. It is shown that the quantification of radiative forcings and climate impacts strongly depends on the choices of the cloud, aerosol, and radiation schemes. The prevailing schemes used in current GCMs are likely insufficient in variety and physically biased in a significant way. There exists large room for improvement by optimally combining radiation transfer with cloud property schemes.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prodromos Zanis ◽  
Dimitris Akritidis ◽  
Aristeidis K. Georgoulias ◽  
Robert J. Allen ◽  
Susanne E. Bauer ◽  
...  

Abstract. In this work, we use Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) simulations from 10 Earth System Models (ESMs) and General Circulation Models (GCMs) to study the fast climate responses on pre-industrial climate, due to present-day aerosols. All models carried out two sets of simulations; a control experiment with all forcings set to the year 1850 and a perturbation experiment with all forcings identical to the control, except for aerosols with precursor emissions set to the year 2014. In response to the pattern of all aerosols effective radiative forcing (ERF), the fast temperature responses are characterised by cooling over the continental areas, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, with the largest cooling over East Asia and India, sulfate being the dominant aerosol surface temperature driver for present-day emissions. In the Arctic there is a warming signal for winter in the ensemble mean of fast temperature responses, but the model-to-model variability is large, and it is presumably linked to aerosol induced circulation changes. The largest fast precipitation responses are seen in the tropical belt regions, generally characterized by a reduction over continental regions and a southward shift of the tropical rain belt. This is a characteristic and robust feature among most models in this study, associated with a southward shift of the Intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) and a weakening of the monsoon systems around the globe (Asia, Africa and America) in response to hemispherically asymmetric cooling from a Northern Hemisphere aerosol perturbation, leading the ITCZ and tropical precipitation to shift away from the cooled hemispheric pattern. An interesting feature in aerosol induced circulation changes is a characteristic dipole pattern with intensification of the Icelandic Low and an anticyclonic anomaly over Southeastern Europe, inducing warm air advection towards the northern polar latitudes in winter.


2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 7595-7620 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Jarsjö ◽  
S. M. Asokan ◽  
C. Prieto ◽  
A. Bring ◽  
G. Destouni

Abstract. This paper quantifies and conditions expected hydrological responses in the Aral Sea Drainage Basin (ASDB; occupying 1.3 % of the earth's land surface), Central Asia, to multi-model projections of climate change in the region from 20 general circulation models (GCMs). The aim is to investigate how uncertainties of future climate change interact with the effects of historic human re-distributions of water for land irrigation to influence future water fluxes and water resources. So far, historic irrigation changes have greatly amplified water losses by evapotranspiration (ET) in the ASDB, whereas the 20th century climate change has not much affected the regional net water loss to the atmosphere. Projected future climate change (for the period 2010–2039) however is here calculated to considerably increase the net water loss to the atmosphere. Furthermore, the ET response strength to any future temperature change will be further increased by maintained (or increased) irrigation practices. With such irrigation practices, the river runoff is likely to decrease to near-total depletion, with risk for cascading ecological regime shifts in aquatic ecosystems downstream of irrigated land areas. Without irrigation, the agricultural areas of the principal Syr Darya river basin could sustain a 50 % higher temperature increase (of 2.3 °C instead of the projected 1.5 °C until 2010–2039) before yielding the same consumptive ET increase and associated R decrease as with the present irrigation practices.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saloua Peatier ◽  
Benjamin Sanderson ◽  
Laurent Terray

<p>The global surface temperature response to CO2 doubling (Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity or ECS) is a key uncertain parameter determining the extent of future climate change. Sherwood et al. (2020) estimated the ECS to be within [2.6K - 4.5K], but in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6), 1/3 of the General Circulation Models (GCMs) show ECS exceeding 4.5K (Zelinka et al., 2020). CNRM-CM6-1 is one of these models, with an ECS of 4.9K. In this paper, we sampled 30 atmospheric parameters of CNRM-CM6-1 and produced a Perturbed Physics Ensemble (PPE) of atmospheric-only simulations to explore the feedback parameters diversity and the climatological plausibility of the members. This PPE showed a comparable  range of feedback parameters to the multi-model archive, from 0.8 W.m-2/K to 1.8 W.m-2/K. Emulators of climatological performance and feedback parameters were used together with  observational datasets to search for optimal model configurations conditional on different net climate feedbacks. The climatological constraints considered here did not themselves rule out the higher end ECS values of 5K and above. An optimal subset of parameter configurations were chosen to sample the range of ECS allowing the assessment of feedback constraints in future fully coupled experiments.</p><p> </p><p><strong>References :</strong></p><p>Sherwood, S. C., Webb, M. J., Annan, J. D., Armour, K. C., Forster, P. M., Hargreaves, J. C., ... & Zelinka, M. D. (2020). An assessment of Earth's climate sensitivity using multiple lines of evidence. Reviews of Geophysics, 58(4), e2019RG000678.</p><p>Zelinka, M. D., Myers, T. A., McCoy, D. T., Po‐Chedley, S., Caldwell, P. M., Ceppi, P., ... & Taylor, K. E. (2020). Causes of higher climate sensitivity in CMIP6 models. Geophysical Research Letters, 47(1), e2019GL085782.</p><p><br><br></p>


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-58
Author(s):  
Chuanhao Wu ◽  
Pat J.-F. Yeh ◽  
Jiali Ju ◽  
Yi-Ying Chen ◽  
Kai Xu ◽  
...  

AbstractDrought projections are accompanied with large uncertainties due to varying estimates of future warming scenarios from different modelling and forcing data. Using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), this study presents a global assessment of uncertainties in drought characteristics (severity S and frequency Df) projections based on the simulations of 28 general circulation models (GCMs) from the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). A hierarchical framework incorporating a variance–based global sensitivity analysis was developed to quantify the uncertainties in drought characteristics projections at various spatial (global and regional) and temporal (decadal and 30-yr) scales due to 28 GCMs, 3 Representative Concentration Pathway scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP8.5), and 2 bias-correction (BC) methods. The results indicated that the largest uncertainty contribution in the globally projected S and Df is from the GCM (>60%), followed by BC (<35%) and RCP (<16%). Spatially, BC reduces the spreads among GCMs particularly in Northern Hemisphere (NH), leading to smaller GCM uncertainty in NH than Southern Hemisphere (SH). In contrast, the BC and RCP uncertainties are larger in NH than SH, and the BC uncertainty can be larger than GCM uncertainty for some regions (e.g., southwest Asia). At the decadal and 30-yr timescales, the contributions for 3 uncertainty sources show larger variability in S than Df projections, especially in SH. The GCM and BC uncertainties show overall decreasing trends with time, while the RCP uncertainty is expected to increase over time and even can be larger than BC uncertainty for some regions (e.g., northern Asia) by the end of this century.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moetasim Ashfaq ◽  
Tereza Cavazos ◽  
Michelle Reboita ◽  
José Abraham Torres-Alavez ◽  
Eun-Soon Im ◽  
...  

&lt;p&gt;We use an unprecedented ensemble of regional climate model (RCM) projections over seven regional CORDEX domains to provide, for the first time, an RCM-based global view of monsoon changes at various levels of increased greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing. All regional simulations are conducted using RegCM4 at a 25km horizontal grid spacing using lateral and lower boundary forcing from three General Circulation Models (GCMs), which are part of the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project (CMIP5). Each simulation covers the period from 1970 through 2100 under two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.6 and RCP8.5). Regional climate simulations exhibit high fidelity in capturing key characteristics of precipitation and atmospheric dynamics across monsoon regions in the historical period. In the future period, regional monsoons exhibit a spatially robust delay in the monsoon onset, an increase in seasonality, and a reduction in the rainy season length at higher levels of radiative forcing. All regions with substantial delays in the monsoon onset exhibit a decrease in pre-monsoon precipitation, indicating a strong connection between pre-monsoon drying and a shift in the monsoon onset. The weakening of latent heat driven atmospheric warming during the pre-monsoon period delays the overturning of atmospheric subsidence in the monsoon regions, which defers their transitioning into deep convective states. Monsoon changes under the RCP2.6 scenario are mostly within the baseline variability.&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 2360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Blanco-Gómez ◽  
Patricia Jimeno-Sáez ◽  
Javier Senent-Aparicio ◽  
Julio Pérez-Sánchez

This study assessed how changes in terms of temperature and precipitation might translate into changes in water availability and droughts in an area in a developing country with environmental interest. The hydrological model Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was applied to analyze the impacts of climate change on water resources of the Guajoyo River Basin in El Salvador. El Salvador is in one of the most vulnerable regions in Latin America to the effects of climate change. The predicted future climate change by two climate change scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) and five general circulation models (GCMs) were considered. A statistical analysis was performed to identify which GCM was better in terms of goodness of fit to variation in means and standard deviations of the historical series. A significant decreasing trend in precipitation and a significant increase in annual average temperatures were projected by the middle and the end of the twenty–first century. The results indicated a decreasing trend of the amount of water available and more severe droughts for future climate scenarios with respect to the base period (1975–2004). These findings will provide local water management authorities useful information in the face of climate change to help decision making.


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