Abstract
Describing the spatial velocity of climate change is essential to assessing the challenge of natural and human systems to follow its pace by adapting or migrating sufficiently fast. We propose a fully-determined approach, “MATCH”, to calculate a realistic and continuous velocity field of any climate parameter, without the need for ad hoc assumptions. We apply this approach to the displacement of isotherms predicted by global and regional climate models between 1950 and 2100 under the IPCC-AR5 RCP 8.5 emission scenario, and show that it provides detailed velocity patterns especially at the regional scale. This method thus favors comparisons between models as well as the analysis of regional or local features. Furthermore, the trajectories obtained using the MATCH approach are less sensitive to inter-annual fluctuations and therefore allow us to introduce a trajectory regularity index, offering a quantitative perspective on the discussion of climate sinks and sources.
Highlights
Describing the spatial velocity of climate change is essential to assessing the challenge of natural and human systems to follow its pace by adapting or migrating sufficiently fast
We propose a way to build such velocity field, and show that the limitations of the gradient method can be overcome by effectively calculating a continuous field of climate change velocity for any scalar field issued simulated by regional or global climate models, providing a more detailed, smoother velocity field with less vorticity and sensitivity to noise such as inter-annual fluctuations
Especially at the regional scale, that this approach helps the effects of climate change to be addressed and adaptation issues to be discussed
Summary
Describing the spatial velocity of climate change is essential to assessing the challenge of natural and human systems to follow its pace by adapting or migrating sufficiently fast. We propose a fullydetermined approach, “MATCH”, to calculate a realistic and continuous velocity field of any climate parameter, without the need for ad hoc assumptions We apply this approach to the displacement of isotherms predicted by global and regional climate models between 1950 and 2100 under the IPCC-AR5 RCP 8.5 emission scenario, and show that it provides detailed velocity patterns especially at the regional scale. To understand and address these present and future challenges, stakeholders, decision makers, and other practitioners need medium- to long-term projections to develop and implement mitigation as well as adaptation s trategies[2] While such data are provided by regional and global climate models (RCMs and GCMs), displaying them to optimize their intelligibility especially for non-specialists is still a challenge in itself. While this is expected in the case of a homogeneous planet (e.g., an aquaplanet), such an assumption is more than questionable for today’s Earth, where land-ocean inhomogeneities, coasts, altitude differences (i.e. topography), or marine currents carrying heat flows obviously bend the isotherms and steer them along non-trivial paths, affecting their displacement and deforming their shape
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