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Regional climate projections for Northeast India: an appraisal from CORDEX South Asia experiment

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Abstract

An appraisal of the recent changes in the present climate (1970–2005) followed by the possible future (2006–2100) changes in the climate has been carried out in the current study using the observations and regional climate model (REMO) over the Northeast Indian region. The regional climate model simulation has been used from the COordinated Regional climate Downscaling EXperiment (CORDEX) South Asia framework. A consistent warming for the winter (December, January, and February (DJF)) and post-monsoon (October and November (ON)) has been observed for the present climate especially in the northern and eastern parts of the region. The changes in the near future (2020–2049) and far future (2070–2099) temperature climatology suggest a rise in temperature by ~ 3–8 °C across different representative concentration pathways (RCPs). The rate of long-term (1970–2099) increase in temperature has been found ranging between 0.01 and 0.07 °C/year across the region in the least emission (RCP2.6) to strongest emission (RCP8.5) scenarios. The daily mean precipitation statistics suggests an overall increasing trends of precipitation during the pre-monsoon (March, April, and May (MAM)) for the present across the region with a mixed trend in other seasons. A change in daily mean precipitation ranging from − 60% (during winter) to + 40% during post-monsoon has been projected by the model across different RCPs. RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 show a strong deficit in precipitation in the warmer climate across the region as compared to RCP2.6. This fact is also confirmed from the long-term trend of precipitation where a consistent decreasing trend dominates in the RCP4.5- and RCP8.5-simulated precipitations by the end of the twenty-first century. A large model bias in temperature and precipitation along with high amount of uncertainty is associated with the model simulations; thus, in order to use the projections, a more careful approach to improve the utility of downscaled product should be adopted.

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Acknowledgements

Authors thank the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Regional Climate and the Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which was former coordinating body of CORDEX and responsible committee under CMIP5. The production of and sharing of data from RCM experiments carried out by different modeling centers are highly acknowledged. The authors would also like to thank the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) infrastructure and CORDEX data portal of Centre for Climate Change Research (CCCR), Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), for making available CORDEX South Asia data. The partial financial support in form of UGC-JRF fellowship of D. Kumar is also acknowledged. The authors acknowledge JNU for computational facility and other logistical support.

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  1. School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

    D. Kumar & A. P. Dimri

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Kumar, D., Dimri, A.P. Regional climate projections for Northeast India: an appraisal from CORDEX South Asia experiment. Theor Appl Climatol 134, 1065–1081 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-017-2318-z

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