Robustness of high-resolution regional climate projections for Greenland: a method for uncertainty distillation

Olesen, Martin; Christensen, Jens Hesselbjerg; Kaas, Eigil; Boberg, Fredrik

doi:10.3354/cr01536

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Regional modelers went through some years of trouble with accuracy and uncertainty of modeling regional systems, but they have made much headway in the past several decades or so in understanding and reducing uncertainty in structural and parametric aspects of modeling (e.g., see Arritt and Rummukainen 2011;Rummukainen et al 2015;Olesen et al 2018;Giorgi 2019). RCMs are especially useful in modeling precipitation and extremes of precipitation (Mearns et al 2012;Bukovsky et al 2017;Kendon et al 2017).…”

Section: Regional Climate Models and Their Values And Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In general, it is often enlightening and important to consider the relationships between the driving GCM and any given RCM. A GCM may be wrong or empirically inadequate in a variety of ways, but the RCM has to start with those values or base state, as its boundary conditions (see Arritt and Rummukainen (2011); Rummukainen et al 2015, Olesen et al 2018and citations in FN #1). So the RCM may also be wrong at that scale, because of inadequate boundary conditions, but then the RCM might still be able to add value in finer scale details.…”

Section: Regional Climate Models and Their Values And Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An analysis of the disagreement about added value by regional climate models

2020

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In this paper we consider some questions surrounding whether or not regional climate models "add value," a controversial issue in climate science today. We highlight some objections frequently made about regional climate models both within and outside the community of modelers, including several claims that regional climate models do not "add value." We show that there are a number of issues involved in the latter claims, the primary ones centering on the fact that different research questions are being pursued by the modelers making the complaints against regional climate models. Further issues focus on historical deficiencies of particular-but not generalizable-failures of individual regional models. We provide tools to sort out these different research questions and particular failures, and to improve communication and understanding surrounding added value in climate modeling and philosophy of climate science.

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Section: Regional Climate Models and Their Values And Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Regional Climate Models and Their Values And Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An analysis of the disagreement about added value by regional climate models

2020

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“…The regional atmospheric climate model HIRHAM5 succeeds the previous version HIRHAM4 [8] that represented the atmospheric component in HN1.x. HIRHAM5 has already been used in a number of climate studies for the Arctic (e.g., [9][10][11][12][13][14]) and for other regions of the Earth (e.g., [15][16][17][18][19][20]). A technical description of the model is given by Christensen et al [21].…”

Section: Atmosphere Model Hirham5mentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of the Sea-Ice Simulation in the Upgraded Version of the Coupled Regional Atmosphere-Ocean- Sea Ice Model HIRHAM–NAOSIM 2.0

et al. 2019

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The sea-ice climatology and sea-ice trends and variability are evaluated in simulations with the new version of the coupled Arctic atmosphere-ocean-sea ice model HIRHAM–NAOSIM 2.0. This version utilizes upgraded model components for the coupled subsystems, which include physical and numerical improvements and higher horizontal and vertical resolution, and a revised coupling procedure with the aid of the coupling software YAC (Yet Another Coupler). The model performance is evaluated against observationally based data sets and compared with the previous version. Ensemble simulations for the period 1979–2016 reveal that Arctic sea ice is thicker in all seasons and closer to observations than in the previous version. Wintertime biases in sea-ice extent, upper ocean temperatures, and near-surface air temperatures are reduced, while summertime biases are of similar magnitude as in the previous version. Problematic issues of the current model configuration and potential corrective measures and further developments are discussed.

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“…The uncertainties of such a computationally expensive RCM cannot be estimated by ensemble runs. Olesen et al (2018) tested the robustness of high resolution regional climate projections for Greenland via a method of uncertainty distillation using the corresponding temperature spread in a wider set of global climate models.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential future methane emission hot spots in Greenland

Geng

Christensen

2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Climate models have been making significant progress encompassing an increasing number of complex feedback mechanisms from natural ecosystems. Permafrost thaw and subsequent induced greenhouse gas emissions, however, remain a challenge for climate models at large. Deducing permafrost conditions and associated greenhouse gas emissions from parameters that are simulated in climate models would be a helpful step towards estimating emission budgets from permafrost regions. Here we use a regional climate model with a 5 km horizontal resolution to assess future potential methane (CH 4 ) emissions over presently unglaciated areas in Greenland under an RCP8.5 scenario. A simple frost index is applied to estimate permafrost conditions from the model output. CH 4 flux measurements from two stations in Greenland; Nuuk representing sub-Arctic and Zackenberg high-Arctic climate, are used to establish a relationship between emissions and near surface air temperature. Permafrost conditions in Greenland change drastically by the end of the 21st century in an RCP8.5 climate. Continuous permafrost remains stable only in North Greenland, the north-west coast, the northern tip of Disko Island, and Nuussuaq. Southern Greenland conditions only sustain sporadic permafrost conditions and largely at high elevations, whereas former permafrost in other regions thaws. The increasing thawed soil leads to increasing CH 4 emissions. Especially the area surrounding Kangerlussuaq, Scoresby Land, and the southern coast of Greenland exhibit potentially high emissions during the longer growing season. The constructed maps and budgets combining modelled permafrost conditions with observed CH 4 fluxes from CH 4 promoting sites represent a useful tool to identify areas in need of additional monitoring as they highlight potential CH 4 hot spots.

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Robustness of high-resolution regional climate projections for Greenland: a method for uncertainty distillation

Cited by 5 publications

References 44 publications

An analysis of the disagreement about added value by regional climate models

An analysis of the disagreement about added value by regional climate models

Evaluation of the Sea-Ice Simulation in the Upgraded Version of the Coupled Regional Atmosphere-Ocean- Sea Ice Model HIRHAM–NAOSIM 2.0

Potential future methane emission hot spots in Greenland

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