Abstract
The new Coordinated Output for Regional Evaluations (CORDEX-CORE) ensemble provides high-resolution, consistent regional climate change projections for the major inhabited areas of the world. It serves as a solid scientific basis for further research related to vulnerability, impact, adaptation and climate services in addition to existing CORDEX simulations. The aim of this study is to investigate and document the climate change information provided by the CORDEX-CORE simulation ensemble, as a part of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) CORDEX community. An overview of the annual and monthly mean climate change information in selected regions in different CORDEX domains is presented for temperature and precipitation, providing the foundation for detailed follow-up studies and applications. Initially, two regional climate models (RCMs), REMO and RegCM were used to downscale global climate model output. The driving simulations by AR5 global climate models (AR5-GCMs) were selected to cover the spread of high, medium, and low equilibrium climate sensitivity at a global scale. The CORDEX-CORE ensemble has doubled the spatial resolution compared to the previously existing CORDEX simulations in most of the regions (25,mathrm {km} (0.22^{circ }) versus 50,mathrm {km} (0.44^{circ })) leading to a potentially improved representation of, e.g., physical processes in the RCMs. The analysis focuses on changes in the IPCC physical climate reference regions. The results show a general reasonable representation of the spread of the temperature and precipitation climate change signals of the AR5-GCMs by the CORDEX-CORE simulations in the investigated regions in all CORDEX domains by mostly covering the AR5 interquartile range of climate change signals. The simulated CORDEX-CORE monthly climate change signals mostly follow the AR5-GCMs, although for specific regions they show a different change in the course of the year compared to the AR5-GCMs, especially for RCP8.5, which needs to be investigated further in region specific process studies.
Highlights
Climate change is posing major challenges to society and climate change impacts are expected to increase in the near, as well as long-term future (e.g., IPCC AR5)
We show that the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX)-Coordinated Output for Regional Evaluations (CORE) ensemble reproduces the AR5-global climate models (GCMs) ensembles temporal and spatial mean climate change signals for temperature and precipitation for most IPCC reference regions across the world
In a few IPCC reference regions, the AR5-GCM ensemble of climate change signals is not represented to the full extent by the CORDEX-CORE GCMs and Regional climate models (RCMs)
Summary
Climate change is posing major challenges to society and climate change impacts are expected to increase in the near, as well as long-term future (e.g., IPCC AR5). One of the aims of the CORDEX-CORE effort is to produce a coordinated set of downscaled regional climate information for the major inhabited regions of the world at unprecedented resolution and of reasonable ensemble size in order to support vulnerability, impact, adaptation and climate services applications (e.g., Ruane et al 2016) and to enable detailed regional climate change assessments and process studies. This is especially important in those areas in which only few high-resolution simulations or only comparatively coarse simulations from global models were available so far
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