Present climate and climate change over North America as simulated by the fifth-generation Canadian regional climate model

Abstract

The fifth-generation Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM5) was used to dynamically downscale two Coupled Global Climate Model (CGCM) simulations of the transient climate change for the period 1950-2100, over North America, following the CORDEX protocol. The CRCM5 was driven by data from the CanESM2 and MPI-ESM-LR CGCM simulations, based on the historical (1850-2005) and future (2006-2100) RCP4.5 radiative forcing scenario. The results show that the CRCM5 simulations reproduce relatively well the current-climate North American regional climatic features, such as the temperature and precipitation multiannual means, annual cycles and temporal variability at daily scale. A cold bias was noted during the winter season over western and southern portions of the continent. CRCM5-simulated precipitation accumulations at daily temporal scale are much more realistic when compared with its driving CGCM simulations, especially in summer when small-scale driven convective precipitation has a large contribution over land. The CRCM5 climate projections imply a general warming over the continent in the 21st century, especially over the northern regions in winter. The winter warming is mostly contributed by the lower percentiles of daily temperatures, implying a reduction in the frequency and intensity of cold waves. A precipitation decrease is projected over Central America and an increase over the rest of the continent. For the average precipitation change in summer however there is little consensus between the simulations. Some of these differences can be attributed to the uncertainties in CGCMprojected changes in the position and strength of the Pacific Ocean subtropical high pressure.

Comparison between high-resolution climate simulations using single- and double-nesting approaches within the Big-Brother experimental protocol

“…The experiments have been performed with the fifthgeneration Canadian RCM (CRCM5; Hernández-Díaz et al 2013;Martynov et al 2013;Šeparović et al 2013). CRCM5 is based, in large part, on the Global Environmental Multiscale model [GEM; Côté et al (1998a, b)] developed by Environment Canada for use in numerical weather prediction (NWP).…”

Dynamical downscaling with the fifth-generation Canadian regional climate model (CRCM5) over the CORDEX Arctic domain: effect of large-scale spectral nudging and of empirical correction of sea-surface temperature

“…The Canadian Regional Climate Model, version 5 (CRCM5) has contributed to the CORDEX program over three CORDEX domains so far: North America Šeparović et al 2013), Africa Laprise et al 2013) and South Asia (Alexandru and Sushama 2014). Paquin and Sushama (2014) have carried some experiments with CRCM5 over the Arctic.…”

Evaluation of extreme rainfall and temperature over North America in CanRCM4 and CRCM5

“…Extreme monthly cool-season precipitation in the NARCCAP suite of RCMs is well simulated for the south-west coast of North America and in the upper Mississippi River basin, with a dry bias in the previous version of the CRCM compared to observations (Gutowski et al 2010). From the CORDEX suite of RCMs, daily mean, 5th and 95th percentile rainfall and temperature in CRCM5 has been evaluated compared to ERA-Interim and other observational data sets Šeparović et al 2013). These studies show that CRCM5 was able to reproduce the current climate reasonably well.…”