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Non-stationary return levels of CMIP5 multi-model temperature extremes

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Abstract

The objective of this study is to evaluate to what extent the CMIP5 climate model simulations of the climate of the twentieth century can represent observed warm monthly temperature extremes under a changing environment. The biases and spatial patterns of 2-, 10-, 25-, 50- and 100-year return levels of the annual maxima of monthly mean temperature (hereafter, annual temperature maxima) from CMIP5 simulations are compared with those of Climatic Research Unit (CRU) observational data considered under a non-stationary assumption. The results show that CMIP5 climate models collectively underestimate the mean annual maxima over arid and semi-arid regions that are most subject to severe heat waves and droughts. Furthermore, the results indicate that most climate models tend to underestimate the historical annual temperature maxima over the United States and Greenland, while generally disagreeing in their simulations over cold regions. Return level analysis shows that with respect to the spatial patterns of the annual temperature maxima, there are good agreements between the CRU observations and most CMIP5 simulations. However, the magnitudes of the simulated annual temperature maxima differ substantially across individual models. Discrepancies are generally larger over higher latitudes and cold regions.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions which significantly improved the paper. The financial support for authors LC and AA was made available by the Environmental Sciences Division of the Army Research Office Award No. W911NF-14-1-0684. The contributions of author TJP were performed under the auspices of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-O7NA27344. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate-modeling groups for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and leads the development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals.

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  1. University of California, Irvine, E4130 Engineering Gateway, Irvine, CA, 92697-2175, USA

    Linyin Cheng & Amir AghaKouchak

  2. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 7000 East Avenue, Livermore, CA, 94550, USA

    Thomas J. Phillips

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Cheng, L., Phillips, T.J. & AghaKouchak, A. Non-stationary return levels of CMIP5 multi-model temperature extremes. Clim Dyn 44, 2947–2963 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-015-2625-y

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