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Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology pp 8902–8919Cite as

Regional Climate Models

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Abstract

Regional climate models are numerical models that simulate the climate of geographic regions typically covering a few thousand square kilometers to a continent. Most regional climate models include models that describe the atmosphere and the underlying land surface, but a few also include models of ocean and sea ice and atmospheric aerosols and chemistry. Given the atmospheric state at the lateral boundaries, regional climate models simulate regional climate in the context of the evolving global climate. Because regional domains cover only a fraction of the globe, it is computationally more feasible to apply regional climate models at higher grid resolution compared to global climate models to better resolve atmospheric and terrestrial processes and how they respond to regional forcings such as topography and land cover/land use. While global climate models are generally applied at grid resolution of a few hundred kilometers, regional climate models have been more commonly applied at grid resolution of a few tens of kilometers. Therefore, a common application of regional climate models is the dynamical downscaling of global climate simulations to provide regional climate information related to climate change projections or climate predictions. As such, regional climate models have served an important function of providing regional climate scenarios needed to assess a wide range of societal relevant climate impacts such as climate change effects on water resources and ecosystems. Regional climate models are also used to study regional climate processes, particularly those that are related to the water cycle that is inherently multi-scale; so explicitly representing finer scale processes is important to simulate its variations at multiple time and space scales.

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Abbreviations

Downscaling:

Development of climate information at local or regional scale from coarse resolution data or model outputs; both statistical and dynamical methods can be used.

GCM:

Global climate model, a climate model based on the general circulation of the atmosphere, often coupled with models of ocean circulation and sea ice.

Mesoscale:

In the atmosphere, mesoscale generally refers to horizontal scales that lie between the scale height of the atmosphere (about 10 km) and the Rossby radius of deformation (tens to hundreds of kilometers).

Nudging:

Method to reduce the differences between the simulated and observed or imposed states by applying corrections, usually in the form of tendencies to the prognostic equations, based on the differences.

RCM:

Regional climate model (also called nested regional climate model), a climate model applied over a limited area with boundary conditions provided by global models or analyses.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my colleagues at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and my collaborators over the years, whose research has inspired me. I also thank them for sharing their ideas, knowledge, and results with me.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Atmospheric Sciences and Global Change Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, 99352, USA

    L. Ruby Leung

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  1. L. Ruby Leung
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Correspondence to L. Ruby Leung .

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  1. RAMTECH LIMITED, Larkspur, CA, USA

    Robert A. Meyers

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Leung, L.R. (2012). Regional Climate Models . In: Meyers, R.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0851-3_363

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