Temperature and precipitation projection at 1.5 and 2°C increase in global mean temperature

Abstract

Based on climate model outputs from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), we investigated the global temperature and precipitation changes when global mean temperature rises by 1.5 and 2°C relative to the pre- industrial period (1861–1900). Multi-model ensemble mean (MME) shows that for the scenarios RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5, global mean near-surface temperature (GMST) may reach 1.5°C warming relative to the pre- industrial level (1861–1900) around the year 2036, 2028, 2033 and 2025, respectively; and reach 2°C warming in 2049 (RCP4.5), 2056 (RCP6.0) and 2039 (RCP8.5). For RCP2.6 scenario, the 2°C warming could not be seen in the multi-model ensemble mean before 2100, but can be reached in different years in single model simulations including GFDL-CM3, IPSL-CM5A-LR, IPSL-CM5A-MR and MIROC-ESM. The timing when the GMST reaches a specific warming threshold is primarily related to radiative forcing and CO2-equivalent concentrations, which show similar value when the GMST rises by the same value. Projections under all RCPs from 25 CMIP5 models show that only 6 models under RCP2.6 scenario can project a warming lower than 1.5°C relative to the pre-industrial era before 2100, while the temperature increase under other three scenarios will be more than 1.5°C. It is therefore necessary to develop a set of lower emission scenarios to limit the global warming below 1.5°C. The investigations on inter-model differences show that the model with large transient climate response (TCR), also known as warm models, may reach the 1.5 and 2°C temperature increase earlier than those with low TCR (cold models), though other factors can also affect the model to reach 1.5 or 2°C temperature increase. For the future changes of temperature and precipitation at global scale, the MME results show little distinction among different scenarios when GMST rises by the same value, indicating that the global and regional response characteristics of temperature and precipitation are independent of the RCP scenarios definition (defined by the radiative forcing by 2100). Therefore, it is possible to investigate the changes in temperature increase 0.5 under RCP8.5 scenarios. The results show that regional responses are almost the same when GMST rises by each additional 0.5°C, indicating that the temperature and precipitation will essentially change linearly. These changes are characterized by more temperature increase in higher latitudes than in low latitudes, more temperature rise in land than in ocean, and increased precipitation in wet areas and decreased precipitation in dry areas, as was commonly detected in multiple studies. This suggests that the global warming impacts could be evaluated based on the multi-model ensemble projections under any RCP scenario with as much as a collection of models. This study also shows that in China, the regional mean temperature and precipitation changes are larger than the global mean when the GMST rises by 1.5 and 2°C. The temperature may increase across all China, with the warming increases from southeast to northwest. The precipitation will increase in most areas but it may decrease in the eastern part south of 30°N, based on the MME results.