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Current and perturbed climate as simulated by the second-generation Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM-II) over northwestern North America

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Abstract

An updated version of the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM-II) has been used to perform time-slice simulations over northwestern North America, nested in the coupled Canadian General Circulation Model (CGCM2). Both driving and driven models are integrated in a scenario of transient greenhouse gases (GHG) and aerosols. The time slices span three decades that were chosen to correspond roughly to single, double and triple current GHG concentration levels. Several enhancements have been implemented in CRCM-II since the CRCM-I climate-change simulations reported upon earlier. The larger computational domain, extending further to the west, north and south, allows for a better spin-up of weather systems as they enter the regional domain. The increased length of the simulations, from 5 to 10 years, strengthens the statistical robustness of the results. The improvements to the physical parameterisation, notably the moist convection scheme and the diagnostic cloud formulation, cure the excessive cloud cover problem present in CRCM-I, reduce the warm surface bias and prevent the occurrence of grid-point precipitation storms that occurred with CRCM-I in summer. The dynamical ocean and sea-ice components of CGCM2 that is used to provide atmospheric lateral and surface boundary conditions to CRCM-II, as well as the use of transient rather than equilibrium conditions of GHG and the inclusion of direct aerosols forcing, in both CGCM2 and CRCM-II, increase the realism of the CRCM-II climate-change simulation.

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Acknowledgements.

The authors want to thank their colleagues of the Canadian Regional Climate Modelling group at UQÀM, Mr Michel Giguère, Ms Hélène Côté, Mr Sébastien Biner and Dr. Pascale Martineu, for their contributions that made it possible for us to complete this work. We also thank Claude Desrochers for maintaining a user-friendly local computing environment at the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences of UQÀM. We would like to express our gratitude to the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, for the use of their observation analyses; the CRU 0.5° latitude–longitude gridded monthly climate data was supplied by the Climate Impacts LINK Project (UK Department of the Environment Contract EPG 1/1/16) on behalf of the CRU. We also want to thank Mr Ross D. Brown of the Meteorological Service of Canada for providing us with the North American gridded snow data in a convenient format. The collaboration of the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma) in Victoria BC is warmly acknowledged. The availability of Drs Francis Zwiers, George J. Boer, Norman A. McFarlane and Gregory M. Flato for discussing modelling and diagnostics issues, was kindly appreciated. Without free access to CCCma's software, CGCM2-simulated data and allocation on the super-computing facility at the Centre d'Informatique de Dorval, this project would not have been possible. This research was financially supported by the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC), through funding of the Canadian Climatic Research Network (CRN) operated by the Canadian Institute for Climate Studies (CICS), by the Canadian National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), through a Strategic Project grant, by the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS), and by the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM).

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  1. CRCM/UQAM – Ouranos, 550 West Sherbrooke St, 19th floor, Montréal (Québec), Canada H3A 1B9

    R. Laprise, D. Caya, A. Frigon & D. Paquin

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  1. R. Laprise
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Correspondence to R. Laprise.

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Laprise, R., Caya, D., Frigon, A. et al. Current and perturbed climate as simulated by the second-generation Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM-II) over northwestern North America. Climate Dynamics 21, 405–421 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-003-0342-4

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