Future climate change scenarios for Asia as inferred from selected coupled atmosphere-ocean global climate models

The response of the Asian continent to transient increases in future anthropogenic radiative forcings using the data generated in a set of numerical experiments performed with four coupled atmosphere-ocean global climate models (A-O GCMs) is examined here. These A-O GCMs have demonstrated reasonable skill as regards their ability to simulate the broad features of present-day observed climatological features over the Asian region. A plausible scenario of climate change over Asia and its six sub-regions as inferred from these A-O GCMs due to the future emissions of greenhouse gases and/or sulfate aerosols is presented. In general, the projected warming over Asia is higher during NH winter than during summer for both the decades 2050s (2040-2069) and 2080s (2070-2099). The rise in surface air temperature is likely to be most pronounced over the North Asia region in all the seasons. Each of the four A-O GCMs considered here simulates an enhanced hydrological cycle and an increase in annual precipitation over most of Asia. The inter-model differences in projections of precipitation are quite large even when averaged for the entire Asian continent suggesting rather limited confidence in the future projections of regional scale precipitation in currently available A-O GCM simulations.