Climate Change Projections over CORDEX East Asia Domain using Multi-RCMs

Abstract

In this study, global climate change scenario by HadGEM2-AO is dynamically downscaled using 5 Regional Climate Models (RCMs) for the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) - East Asia. All RCMs with 50-km horizontal resolution are integrated for continuous 71 years (1979-2049). In the evaluation of historical runs, all models tend to overestimate precipitation over the subtropical western North Pacific. For the surface air temperature, all models have cold biases over the East Asian continent compared to the observation. In the future projections, all models show similar changes in precipitation such as increasing precipitation over the tropical oceans and slightly decreasing precipitation over the East China Sea. In the mid-latitudes, convective precipitation tends to increase due to the enhanced convective instability, while non-convective precipitation tends to decrease slightly due to the changes in subtropical high and monsoon circulation. For surface air temperature, the warming tendency over the entire domain is captured by all models and it is larger in high latitude regions. The warming temperature is related to the increase in longwave radiation, which leads to prominent increase in minimum surface air temperature.clos