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Climatic change on the Gulf of Fonseca (Central America) using two-step statistical downscaling of CMIP5 model outputs

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Abstract

A two-step statistical downscaling method has been reviewed and adapted to simulate twenty-first-century climate projections for the Gulf of Fonseca (Central America, Pacific Coast) using Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) climate models. The downscaling methodology is adjusted after looking for good predictor fields for this area (where the geostrophic approximation fails and the real wind fields are the most applicable). The method’s performance for daily precipitation and maximum and minimum temperature is analysed and revealed suitable results for all variables. For instance, the method is able to simulate the characteristic cycle of the wet season for this area, which includes a mid-summer drought between two peaks. Future projections show a gradual temperature increase throughout the twenty-first century and a change in the features of the wet season (the first peak and mid-summer rainfall being reduced relative to the second peak, earlier onset of the wet season and a broader second peak).

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the European Commission (EuropeAid) through the DCI-ENV/2010/256-823 project. We thank the CIDEA Institute (Universidad Centroamericana (UCA), Managua, Nicaragua, http://cidea.uca.edu.ni/) and the Institute for Hunger Studies (www.ieham.org) for their support. We thank the Institute of Territorial Studies (INETER) of Nicaragua and the Department of Water Resources (DGRH/SERNA) of Honduras for the availability of meteorological station data and the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of the USA for providing the Global Summary of the Day (GSOD). We would like to acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modelling groups (listed in Table 1) for producing their model output and making it available. We additionally thank the National Centres for Environmental Prediction, NCEP/NCAR (NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, CO, USA) (www.esrl.noaa.gov/) for offering the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data. And our gratitude also goes to the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and the CGIAR Research Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) for providing the PRECIS simulation data used (http://www.ccafs-climate.org/).

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  1. Climate Research Foundation (FIC), C/ Gran Vía 22 (dupl.), 7°, 28013, Madrid, Spain

    Jaime Ribalaygua, Emma Gaitán, Javier Pórtoles & Robert Monjo

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  1. Jaime Ribalaygua
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Ribalaygua, J., Gaitán, E., Pórtoles, J. et al. Climatic change on the Gulf of Fonseca (Central America) using two-step statistical downscaling of CMIP5 model outputs. Theor Appl Climatol 132, 867–883 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-017-2130-9

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