Projection of high-resolution climate change in the late 21st century over Northern East Asian region using multi-regional climate models and ensembles under 4 RCP scenarios

Abstract:

In this study, we simulated the regional climate over Northern East Asian (NEA) region focusing on South Korea for about 110 years (current: 1979-2010, future: 2019-2100 under 4 RCP scenarios) with a 12.5 km horizontal resolution using five regional climate models (RegCM4, WRF, HadGEM3-RA, GRIMs, SNURCM) and two ensemble methods. The simulation results of HadGEM2-AO provided from NIMR/KMA were used as boundary data for RCMs. In general, the five RCMs well simulated the spatial/seasonal variations for thetemperature and precipitation. In particular, the simulation skills of RCMs were clearly improved in both temperature and precipitation compared with that of HadGEM2-AO. However, their simulation skills had systematic error although the magnitudes of error were dependent on the RCMs, variables, seasons, and locations. The simple ensemble reduced the model biases, but most of the systematic biases were still remained. On the other hand, the weighted ensemble averaging using Taylor's skill score (WEA_Tay) clearly reduced the biases irrespective of variables and seasons in terms of mean climate. The temperature over NEA region in the late 21st century is projected to increase irrespective of locations, scenarios (+1.96~+4.85℃), and seasons with more warming at northern part of model domain. On the other hand, the precipitation changes are depended on the locations, scenarios and seasons. More detailed results for climate changes in the late 21st century under 4 RCP scenarios by five RCMs and ensembles will be discussed in presentation.