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Changes of precipitation extremes over South Korea projected by the 5 RCMs under RCP scenarios

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Abstract

The change of extreme precipitation is assessed with the HadGEM2-AO - 5 Regional Climate Models (RCMs) chain, which is a national downscaling project undertaken cooperatively by several South Korean institutes aimed at producing regional climate change projection with fine resolution (12.5 km) around the Korean Peninsula. The downscaling domain, resolution and lateral boundary conditions are held the same among the 5 RCMs to minimize the uncertainties from model configuration. Climatological changes reveal a statistically significant increase in the mid-21st century (2046- 2070; Fut1) and the late-21st century (2076-2100; Fut2) precipitation properties related to extreme precipitation, such as precipitation intensity and average of upper 5 percentile daily precipitation, with respect to the reference period (1981-2005). Changes depending on the intensity categories also present a clear trend of decreasing light rain and increasing heavy rain. In accordance with these results, the change of 1-in-50 year maximum precipitation intensity over South Korea is estimated by the GEV method. The result suggests that the 50-year return value (RV50) will change from -32.69% to 72.7% and from -31.6% to 96.32% in Fut1 and from -31.97% to 86.25% and from -19.45% to 134.88% in Fut2 under representative concentration pathway (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios, respectively, at the 90% confidence level. This study suggests that multi-RCMs can be used to reduce uncertainties and assess the future change of extreme precipitation more reliably. Moreover, future projection of the regional climate change contains uncertainties evoked from not only driving GCM but also RCM. Therefore, multi-GCM and multi-RCM studies are expected to provide more robust projection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Pusan National University, Busan, Korea

    Joong-Bae Ahn & Sera Jo

  2. Kongju National University, Kongju, Korea

    Myoung-Seok Suh

  3. Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, Korea

    Dong-Hyun Cha

  4. Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

    Dong-Kyou Lee

  5. Korea Institute of Atmospheric Prediction Systems, Seoul, Korea

    Song-You Hong

  6. Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, Korea

    Seung-Ki Min

  7. Korea Meteorological Administration, Seoul, Korea

    Seong-Chan Park

  8. National Institute of Meteorological Research, Jeju, Korea

    Hyun-Suk Kang

  9. National Institute of Agricultural Science, Wanju, Korea

    Kyo-Moon Shim

  10. Climate Prediction Laboratory, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Pusan National University, Gumjung-gu, Jangjeon-dong, Busan, 46241, Korea

    Sera Jo

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  1. Joong-Bae Ahn
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Correspondence to Sera Jo.

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Ahn, JB., Jo, S., Suh, MS. et al. Changes of precipitation extremes over South Korea projected by the 5 RCMs under RCP scenarios. Asia-Pacific J Atmos Sci 52, 223–236 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13143-016-0021-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13143-016-0021-0

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