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Present and future climatologies in the phase I CREMA experiment

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Abstract

We provide an overall assessment of the surface air temperature and precipitation present day (1976–2005) and future (2070–2099) ensemble climatologies in the Phase I CREMA experiment. This consists of simulations performed with different configurations (physics schemes) of the ICTP regional model RegCM4 over five CORDEX domains (Africa, Mediterranean, Central America, South America, South Asia), driven by different combinations of three global climate models (GCMs) and two greenhouse gas (GHG) representative concentration pathways (RCP8.5 and RCP4.5). The biases (1976–2005) in the driving and nested model ensembles compared to observations show a high degree of spatial variability and, when comparing GCMs and RegCM4, similar magnitudes and more similarity for precipitation than for temperature. The large scale patterns of change (2070–2099 minus 1976–2005) are broadly consistent across the GCM and RegCM4 ensembles and with previous analyses of GCM projections, indicating that the GCMs selected in the CREMA experiment are representative of the more general behavior of current GCMs. The RegCM4, however, shows a lower climate sensitivity (reduced warming) than the driving GCMs, especially when using the CLM land surface scheme. While the broad patterns of precipitation change are consistent across the GCM and RegCM4 ensembles, greater differences are found at sub-regional scales over the various domains, evidently tied to the representation of local processes. This paper serves to provide a reference view of the behavior of the CREMA ensemble, while more detailed and process-based analysis of individual domains is left to companion papers of this special issue.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been partially funded by the Project Next Data of the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research, and the Italian Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy

    Erika Coppola, Filippo Giorgi, Francesca Raffaele, Graziano Giuliani, Laura Mariotti, Gulilat Tefera Diro & Csaba Torma

  2. Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education at Ensenada, Baja, California (CICESE), Mexico

    Ramon Fuentes-Franco

  3. Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of São Paulo, Rua do Matão, 1226, Cid. Universitária, São Paulo, SP, 05508-090, Brazil

    Marta LLopart-Pereira

  4. Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India

    Ashu Mamgain

Authors
  1. Erika Coppola
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  2. Filippo Giorgi
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  3. Francesca Raffaele
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  4. Ramon Fuentes-Franco
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  5. Graziano Giuliani
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  6. Marta LLopart-Pereira
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  7. Ashu Mamgain
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  8. Laura Mariotti
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  9. Gulilat Tefera Diro
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  10. Csaba Torma
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Erika Coppola.

Additional information

This article is part of a Special Issue on "The Phase I CORDEX RegCM4 Experiment MAtrix (CREMA)" edited by Filippo Giorgi, William Gutowski, and Ray W. Arritt.

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Coppola, E., Giorgi, F., Raffaele, F. et al. Present and future climatologies in the phase I CREMA experiment. Climatic Change 125, 23–38 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1137-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1137-9

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