Abstract
The objective of this work was to analyze and compare results from two generations of global climate models (GCMs) simulations for the city of Recife-PE: CMIP3 and CMIP5. Differences and similarities in historical and future climate simulations are presented for four GCMs using CMIP3 scenarios A1B and A2 and for seven CMIP5 scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. The scale reduction technique applied to GCMs scenarios is statistical downscaling, employing the same set of large-scale atmospheric variables as predictors for both sets of scenarios, differing only in the type of reanalysis data used to characterize surface variables precipitation, maximum and minimum temperatures. For CMIP3 scenarios the simulated historical climate is 1961-1990 and CMIP5 is 1979-2000, and the validation period is ten years, 1991-2000 for CMIP3 and 2001-2010 for CMIP5. However, for both the future period analyzed is 2021-2050 and 2051-2080. Validation metrics indicated superior results from the historical simulations of CMIP5 over those of CMIP3 for precipitation and minimum and similar temperatures for maximum temperatures. For the future, both CMIP3 and CMIP5 scenarios indicate reduced precipitation and increased temperatures. The potencial evapotranspiration was calculated, projected to increase in scenarios A1B and A2 of CMIP3 and with behavior similar to that observed historically in scenarios RCP4.5 and 8.5.
Highlights
Global Climate Models (GCMs) have been developed and improved to generate feasible projections of future climate, based on the current outlook of greenhouse gas emission trends, for scenarios that favour stabilization/reduction of emissions, as well as climate change for chaotic scenarios where the world's population will intensify fossil fuel use without any control effort
This research aims to analyse future climate scenarios and evaluate the impacts on the distribution of the variables rainfall, temperature and potential evapotranspiration for the horizon 2021-2080, from the comparison of the historical and future climate simulations produced by phases 3 and 5 of the Coupled-Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3 and CMIP5), respectively
The CMIP5 models presented climatological values closer to the observation than the CMIP3 models, which overestimated the climatological average in May, June, August, September and October
Summary
Global Climate Models (GCMs) have been developed and improved to generate feasible projections of future climate, based on the current outlook of greenhouse gas emission trends, for scenarios that favour stabilization/reduction of emissions, as well as climate change for chaotic scenarios where the world's population will intensify fossil fuel use without any control effort These scenarios are updated to improve understanding of what may happen to future climate according to the anthropic influence on the current climate, according to various environmental parameters compiled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) team, which investigates climate change ongoing on the planet (Silva et al, 2013). Detailed studies of recent climate change associated with future regionalized climate change scenarios allow us to analyse the degree of magnitude that these changes may affect a particular locality. In this sense, the present research was developed in order to achieve the following objectives: to validate the
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