Projected changes in temperature and precipitation extremes over the Silk Road Economic Belt regions by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 multi‐model ensembles

Abstract

The Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st‐century Maritime Silk Road is a development initiative proposed by the Chinese government. However, the Belt and Road regions involve a large population, and regional economic development is sensitive to climate change, particularly climate extreme events. Hence, it is of vital relevance to pay more attention to the climate extreme change over this region. In this study, changes in the temperature‐ and precipitation‐related extremes over the Belt and Road regions are evaluated during the middle and the end of this century using Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) simulations. Results present obvious changes in extreme temperature and precipitation indices under both RCP4.5 (representative concentration pathways) and RCP8.5 scenarios against the current climate state (1986–2005). Changes generally present relatively larger magnitudes under RCP8.5 than RCP4.5. Projected multi‐model ensemble results show a significant increase in warm events over Moscow and Nairobi. Additionally, cold events will decrease over central Europe, Moscow and central Asia, along with longer growing season length over these regions. The annual mean precipitation is reported to significantly increase over the region of Nairobi and the flooding events will be exacerbated across the Belt regions under a future warmer world, particularly over Moscow, Southeast Asia and Nairobi. Meanwhile, the region of West Asia will be likely to experience more drought and flooding events with the warming. However, we should also note that the inter‐model uncertainty of these results is reported to increase with time and a relatively large model spread can be seen in precipitation‐related indices when comparing with the temperature.