Abstract
CR Climate Research Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsSpecials CR 52:7-29 (2012) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/cr01018 Contribution to the CR Special: 'The regional climate model RegCM4' RegCM4: model description and preliminary tests over multiple CORDEX domains F. Giorgi1,*, E. Coppola1, F. Solmon1, L. Mariotti1, M. B. Sylla1, X. Bi1, N. Elguindi1, G. T. Diro1, V. Nair1, G. Giuliani1, U. U. Turuncoglu1, S. Cozzini2, I. Güttler3, T. A. O’Brien4, A. B. Tawfik5, A. Shalaby6, A. S. Zakey7, A. L. Steiner5, F. Stordal8, L. C. Sloan4, C. Brankovic3 1Earth System Physics Section, International Centre for Theoretical Physics, 34151 Trieste, Italy 2Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 34100 Trieste, Italy 3Croatian Meteorological Service, Zagreb, Croatia 4University of California, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA 5University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA 6Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt 7Danish Meteorological Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark 8University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway *Email: giorgi@ictp.it ABSTRACT: A new version of the RegCM regional climate modeling system, RegCM4, has been recently developed and made available for public use. Compared to previous versions, RegCM4 includes new land surface, planetary boundary layer, and air–sea flux schemes, a mixed convection and tropical band configuration, modifications to the pre-existing radiative transfer and boundary layer schemes, and a full upgrade of the model code towards improved flexibility, portability, and user friendliness. The model can be interactively coupled to a 1D lake model, a simplified aerosol scheme (including organic carbon, black carbon, SO4, dust, and sea spray), and a gas phase chemistry module (CBM-Z). After a general description of the model, a series of test experiments are presented over 4 domains prescribed under the CORDEX framework (Africa, South America, East Asia, and Europe) to provide illustrative examples of the model behavior and sensitivities under different climatic regimes. These experiments indicate that, overall, RegCM4 shows an improved performance in several respects compared to previous versions, although further testing by the user community is needed to fully explore its sensitivities and range of applications. KEY WORDS: RegCM4 · Regional climate model · CORDEX · Model validation Full text in pdf format PreviousNextCite this article as: Giorgi F, Coppola E, Solmon F, Mariotti L and others (2012) RegCM4: model description and preliminary tests over multiple CORDEX domains. Clim Res 52:7-29. https://doi.org/10.3354/cr01018 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in CR Vol. 52. Online publication date: March 22, 2012 Print ISSN: 0936-577X; Online ISSN: 1616-1572 Copyright © 2012 Inter-Research.
Highlights
Interest in regional climate modeling has been steadily increasing in the last 2 decades (e.g Giorgi 2006)
It is supported through the tion, we summarize the basic features of RegCM4, Regional Climate Research Network, or RegCNET, a highlighting the main changes with respect to widespread network of scientists coordinated by the RegCM3
We found that the parameter to which the scheme is most sensitive is by and large the fraction of precipitation evaporated in the downdraft (Peff, with values from 0 to 1), which essentially measures the precipitation efficiency
Summary
Interest in regional climate modeling has been steadily increasing in the last 2 decades (e.g Giorgi 2006). A number of regional climate models (RCMs) have been developed, with a wide base of model users. RegCM4 is an evolution of its previous version, friendly, and portable code that can be applied to any RegCM3, described by Pal et al (2007). The model dynamics are the same as that of the hydrostatic version of MM5 (Grell et al 1994), and since this has not changed in RegCM4, it is not further discussed here (see Giorgi et al 1993a and Grell et al 1994 for more details)
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