Climate Evaluation of a High-Resolution Regional Model over the Canary Current Upwelling System

Abstract

Coastal upwelling systems are very important from the socio-economic point of view due to their high productivity, but they are also vulnerable under changing climate. The impact of climate change on the Canary Current Upwelling System (CCUS) has been studied in recent years by different authors. However, these studies show contradictory results on the question whether coastal upwelling will be more intense or weak in the next decades. One of the reasons for this uncertainty is the low resolution of climate models, making it difficult to properly resolve coastal zone processes. To solve this issue, we propose the use of a high-resolution regional climate coupled model. In this work we evaluate the performance of the regional climate coupled model ROM (REMO-OASIS-MPIOM) in the influence zone of the CCUS as a first step towards a regional climate change scenario downscaling. The results were compared to the output of the global Max Planck Institute Earth System Model (MPI-ESM) showing a significant improvement.