Downscaling extreme month-long anomalies in southern South America

Menéndez, Claudio G.; Castro, Manuel de; Boulanger, Jean‐Louis; D’Onofrio, A.; Sánchez, Enrique; Sörensson, Anna A.; Blazquez, Josefina; Elizalde, Alberto; Jacob, Daniela; Treut, Hervé Le; Li, Z. X.; Núñez, Mario N.; Pessacg, Natalia Liz; Pfeiffer, Susanne; Rojas, Maisa; Rolla, Alfredo Luis; Samuelsson, Patrick; Solman, Silvina Alicia; Teichmann, Claas

doi:10.1007/s10584-009-9739-3

Cited by 45 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 49 publications

(32 reference statements)

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“…As in e.g. Carril et al (2012) and Menéndez et al (2010a), combining models in a multimodel ensemble gives a better climate description than any individual model, independently of the variable and the season. The regional models capture better the spatial characteristics of TN than those of TX: the spread between models is large for TX, with PROMES being the outlier model in this case.…”

Section: Seasonal Mean Fields Of Minimum and Maximum Temperaturementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Changes in temperature extremes for 21st century scenarios over South America derived from a multi-model ensemble of regional climate models

López‐Franca¹,

Zaninelli²,

Carril³

et al. 2016

Clim. Res.

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This study examines a set of 4 temperature extreme indices (cold and warm nighttime and daytime indices) from an ensemble of 4 regional climate models (RCMs) for present and future periods in South America (SA). These models were integrated in the framework of the CLARIS-LPB 7FP-EU-project. We analyze the capability of RCMs to reproduce such indices and explore changes projected by the models under the scenario A1B for the end of the 21st century. The work also analyzes the role of cloudiness, surface radiative forcing and meridional wind components on temperature extremes. Future projections show that, during the austral summer, the increase in the frequency of warm nights is larger than that projected for warm days. This result agrees with the projections for the seasonal mean fields of minimum temperature (TN) versus the maximum temperature (TX) over most of SA. The analysis for the La Plata Basin suggests that this behavior is consistent with the cooling effect of cloud cover affecting TX, while TN is affected by nighttime greenhouse warming. The relationship between cloudiness and TN and TX anomalies shows a nonlinear behavior for near full cloud cover conditions. Although TX and TN anomalies are sensitive to strong cold air advection, TX is more sensitive than TN. Thus, RCMs are useful tools to analyze both the spatial pattern of temperature extremes and the climatic factors involved.

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Section: Seasonal Mean Fields Of Minimum and Maximum Temperaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…As SA is considered as a climate-data-sparse region (Menéndez et al 2010a, Tencer et al 2011, Rusticucci 2012, Skansi et al 2013, RCMs could represent a useful tool for the climatological study of extreme events. The ensemble of RCMs over this region has been shown to be a very interesting tool for these studies (Menéndez et al 2010b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in temperature extremes for 21st century scenarios over South America derived from a multi-model ensemble of regional climate models

López‐Franca¹,

Zaninelli²,

Carril³

et al. 2016

Clim. Res.

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“…To systematically explore uncertainties associated with dynamical downscaling, coordinated RCM simulations are necessary. Such coordinated efforts are available in other regions, such as Europe (e.g., Christensen and Christensen 2007), North America (Mearns et al 2009), and South America (Men endez et al 2010). CORDEX is the first effort to that focuses on the whole of Africa and furthermore treats it as a priority domain (Giorgi et al 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Diagnostic Evaluation of Precipitation in CORDEX Models over Southern Africa

et al. 2013

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The authors evaluate the ability of 10 regional climate models (RCMs) to simulate precipitation over Southern Africa within the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) framework. An ensemble of 10 regional climate simulations and the ensemble average is analyzed to evaluate the models' ability to reproduce seasonal and interannual regional climatic features over regions of the subcontinent. All the RCMs use a similar domain, have a spatial resolution of ;50 km, and are driven by the Interim ECMWF Re-Analysis (ERA-Interim;-2008. Results are compared against a number of observational datasets.In general, the spatial and temporal nature of rainfall over the region is captured by all RCMs, although individual models exhibit wet or dry biases over particular regions of the domain. Models generally produce lower seasonal variability of precipitation compared to observations and the magnitude of the variability varies in space and time. Model biases are related to model setup, simulated circulation anomalies, and moisture transport. The multimodel ensemble mean generally outperforms individual models, with bias magnitudes similar to differences across the observational datasets. In the northern parts of the domain, some of the RCMs and the ensemble average improve the precipitation climate compared to that of ERA-Interim. The models are generally able to capture the dry (wet) precipitation anomaly associated with El Niño (La Niña) events across the region. Based on this analysis, the authors suggest that the present set of RCMs can be used to provide useful information on climate projections of rainfall over Southern Africa.

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“…With regard to the modelling of the current climate and the evaluation of projections of the effects of climate change on the basin, several studies were conducted by assembling different emission scenarios (RCP 8.5, RCP 6.0, RCP 4.5, and RCP 2.6) with regional climate models (RCM, e.g., REGCM3, RegCM4, Eta, RCA, MM5, and REMO) driven by global climate models (GCM, e.g., HadGEM2, HadCM3, MIROC5, EC5OM, ECHAM5, GFDL, and MPI) (e.g., [3,11,13,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]). In order to assess a wide range of uncertainty sources, in recent years many studies have followed an ensemble modelling approach.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The most ambitious collaborative initiative for producing ensembles of RCM simulations over the La Plata Basin was performed within the CLARIS-LPB Project (a Europe-South America network for climate change assessment and impact studies [42,43]). A suite of seven coordinated RCM simulations over South America (with an approximate grid resolution of 50 km) driven by both the ERA-interim [44] reanalysis and a set of GCMs were evaluated [34,[36][37][38][39][40]42]. Carril et al [36] found relatively good agreement for the annual precipitation average cycle over the La Plata Basin by applying an ensemble of RCMs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of Current and Future SPEI Droughts in the La Plata Basin Based on Results from the Regional Eta Climate Model

Sordo‐Ward

Bejarano

Iglesias

et al. 2017

Water

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Abstract:We identified and analysed droughts in the La Plata Basin (divided into seven sub-basins) for the current period and estimated their expected evolution under future climate projections for the periods 2011-2040, 2041-2070, and 2071-2099. Future climate projections were analysed from results of the Eta Regional Climate Model (grid resolution of approximately 10 km) forced by the global climate model HadGEM2-ES over the La Plata basin, and considering a RCP4.5 emission scenario. Within each sub-basin, we particularly focused our drought analyses on croplands and grasslands, due to their economic relevance. The three-month Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI3) was used for drought identification and characterization. Droughts were evaluated in terms of time (percentage of time from the total length of each climate scenario), space (percentage of total area), and severity (SPEI3 values) of cells characterized by cropland and grassland for each sub-basin and climate scenario. Drought-severity-area-frequency curves were developed to quantitatively relate the frequency distribution of drought occurrence to drought severity and area. For the period 2011-2040, droughts dominate the northern sub-basins, whereas alternating wet and short dry periods dominate the southern sub-basins. Wet climate spread from south to north within the La Plata Basin as more distant future scenarios were analysed, due to both a greater number of wet periods and fewer droughts. The area of each sub-basin affected by drought in all climate scenarios was highly varied temporally and spatially. The likelihood of the occurrence of droughts differed significantly between the studied cover types in the Lower Paraguay sub-basin, being higher for cropland than for grassland. Mainly in the Upper Paraguay and in the Upper Paraná basins the climate projections for all scenarios showed an increase of moderate and severe droughts over large regions dedicated to crops and grasses. On the other hand, for the near future, the Lower Uruguay and the River Plata basins showed a decrease of drought severity compared to the current period. Projections suggest an increase in competition among uses in these regions and the need for a potential relocation of certain crops from the northern regions towards cooler regions located in the centre and south. Further research should consider other climate projections and perform high spatial resolution studies in localized areas.

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Downscaling extreme month-long anomalies in southern South America

Cited by 45 publications

References 49 publications

Changes in temperature extremes for 21st century scenarios over South America derived from a multi-model ensemble of regional climate models

Changes in temperature extremes for 21st century scenarios over South America derived from a multi-model ensemble of regional climate models

A Diagnostic Evaluation of Precipitation in CORDEX Models over Southern Africa

Analysis of Current and Future SPEI Droughts in the La Plata Basin Based on Results from the Regional Eta Climate Model

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