Assessment of CMIP5 climate models over South Asia and climate change projections over Pakistan under representative concentration pathways

Abstract

Future climate change projections from global climate models (GCMs) are the primary drivers of regional downscaling and impacts research. Climate projections are also in increased demand from disaster management agencies, policymakers, and other stakeholders. A set of 36 global climate models from the Coupled Model Inter-Comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) is assessed for their performance over South Asia region for making future climate projection with a focus on Pakistan and its sub-regions. A suite of statistics was calculated to assess the credibility of GCMs with the observed statistics. The results show that GCMs have the ability to approximately capture the spatial patterns of temperature; however, the accuracy of precipitation simulation is relatively low. The future projection generated by the GCMs shows that temperature in Pakistan will increase in the 21st century by around 6.7°C under the RCP 8.5 scenarios and with increasing latitude, this warming is getting accelerated.