Abstract
Abstract. Several sets of reference regions have been used in the literature for the regional synthesis of observed and modelled climate and climate change information. A popular example is the series of reference regions used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Adaptation (SREX). The SREX regions were slightly modified for the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC and used for reporting subcontinental observed and projected changes over a reduced number (33) of climatologically consistent regions encompassing a representative number of grid boxes. These regions are intended to allow analysis of atmospheric data over broad land or ocean regions and have been used as the basis for several popular spatially aggregated datasets, such as the Seasonal Mean Temperature and Precipitation in IPCC Regions for CMIP5 dataset. We present an updated version of the reference regions for the analysis of new observed and simulated datasets (including CMIP6) which offer an opportunity for refinement due to the higher atmospheric model resolution. As a result, the number of land and ocean regions is increased to 46 and 15, respectively, better representing consistent regional climate features. The paper describes the rationale for the definition of the new regions and analyses their homogeneity. The regions are defined as polygons and are provided as coordinates and a shapefile together with companion R and Python notebooks to illustrate their use in practical problems (e.g. calculating regional averages). We also describe the generation of a new dataset with monthly temperature and precipitation, spatially aggregated in the new regions, currently for CMIP5 and CMIP6, to be extended to other datasets in the future (including observations). The use of these reference regions, dataset and code is illustrated through a worked example using scatter plots to offer guidance on the likely range of future climate change at the scale of the reference regions. The regions, datasets and code (R and Python notebooks) are freely available at the ATLAS GitHub repository: https://github.com/SantanderMetGroup/ATLAS (last access: 24 August 2020), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3998463 (Iturbide et al., 2020).
Highlights
Different sets of climate reference regions have been proposed in the literature for the regional synthesis of historical trends and future climate change projections and have been subsequently used in the different assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
A new set of 46 land plus 15 ocean regions is introduced in this work updating the previous version of IPCC AR5-WGI reference regions for the regional synthesis of observed and simulated climate change datasets
The new regions increase the climatic consistency of the previous ones – by rearranging and dividing regions exhibiting mixed regional climates – and have a suitable model representation
Summary
Different sets of climate reference regions have been proposed in the literature for the regional synthesis of historical trends and future climate change projections and have been subsequently used in the different assessment reports of the IPCC (we refer to these sets as IPCC WGI reference regions). The AR5 reference regions (http: //www.ipcc-data.org/guidelines/pages/ar5_regions.html; last access: 30 July 2020) were developed for reporting subcontinental CMIP5 projections (with an average horizontal resolution greater than 2◦) and were quickly adopted by the research community as a basis for regional analysis in a variety of applications (Bärring and Strandberg, 2018; Madakumbura et al, 2019) These regions have been used to generate popular spatially aggregated datasets, such as the Seasonal Mean Temperature and Precipitation in IPCC Regions for CMIP5 dataset (McSweeney et al, 2015), which provides ready-to-use information from the CMIP5 models, suitable for regional analysis of climate projections and their uncertainties.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
