Climate Extremes over the Arabian Peninsula Using RegCM4 for Present Conditions Forced by Several CMIP5 Models

Abstract

This paper investigates the temperature and precipitation extremes over the Arabian Peninsula using data from the regional climate model RegCM4 forced by three Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) models and ERA–Interim reanalysis data. Indices of extremes are calculated using daily temperature and precipitation data at 27 meteorological stations located across Saudi Arabia in line with the suggested procedure from the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI) for the present climate (1986–2005) using 1981–2000 as the reference period. The results show that RegCM4 accurately captures the main features of temperature extremes found in surface observations. The results also show that RegCM4 with the CLM land–surface scheme performs better in the simulation of precipitation and minimum temperature, while the BATS scheme is better than CLM in simulating maximum temperature. Among the three CMIP5 models, the two best performing models are found to accurately reproduce the observations in calculating the extreme indices, while the other is not so successful. The reason for the good performance by these two models is that they successfully capture the circulation patterns and the humidity fields, which in turn influence the temperature and precipitation patterns that determine the extremes over the study region.

Updated Assessment of Temperature Extremes over the Middle East–North Africa (MENA) Region from Observational and CMIP5 Data

“…For the MENA, the CMIP5 models project sharp increases in the number of warm days and nights, and in the maximum temperature during the hottest days which may reach 50 • C by the end of the century according to the business-as-usual Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP 8.5) [15]. Similar results are obtained for the region, when the Global Climate Model (GCM) projections are dynamically downscaled with the use of regional climate models (RCM), suggesting an alarming intensification of future heat stress conditions [16][17][18][19][20]. Heat extremes are recognized as the major weather-related cause of premature mortality [21,22], hence their augmentation in the MENA is of particular concern.…”

“…Follow-up work could include output from the new projections driven by the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios from the CMIP6 model simulations to investigate how temperature extremes are represented, considering that several of the participating models have ECS values higher than any of the CMIP5 models [64]. A complete assessment of the evolution of the ETCCDI indices for the MENA region should also use the data from the CMPI5 dynamical downscaling results over the MENA-CORDEX (COordinated Regional Downscaling EXperiment) domain [20,[65][66][67].…”

Analysis of Climate Change and Extreme Climatic Events in the Lake Victoria Region of Tanzania

“…These models were evaluated on their ability to reproduce the historical climate condition over different regions in Tanzania and found reasonable model skill, suggesting their potential use in representing the climate condition in different regions of Tanzania . However, it is important to mention here that although the outputs from RCMs are used in this study or have been used in other previous studies (Tölle et al, 2018;Almazroui, 2019), their results should be interpreted to account for the inability of the models to represent small-scale processes that play a role in modulating the intensity and magnitude of extreme climate events. Historical (1971Historical ( -2000 Climate Condition and Extreme Climate Events in the Lake Victoria Region…”

Assessing Future Changes of Climate Extreme Events in the CORDEX-MENA Region Using Regional Climate Model ALADIN-Climate

“…The MENA region has been proned to climate hazards (Lelieveld et al 2016;Waha et al 2017). These include the devastating Syrian Arab Republic's droughts in 1998-2000and 2007(Kelley et al 2015Flohr et al 2017), the recurrent droughts registered during 1980-1994 in Morocco (Mansouri 2004;Driouech 2010), the prolonged drought of Greater Horn of Africa (Shongwe et al 2011;Mwangi et al 2014;Rowell et al 2015;Gebremeskel et al 2019), drought registered in Jordan and Lebanon in 2014 (Dai 2011;Barlow et al 2016), as well as important changes of climate characteristics are evidenced by several studies focusing on climate trends at regional and local scales (Nasrallah et al 2004;Zhang et al 2005;Driouech 2010; AlSarmi and Washington 2011; Dahech and Beltrando 2012;Almazroui et al 2014;Donat et al 2014;Filahi et al 2015;Almazroui 2019a).…”