Estimating future changes in Alpine flash floods using CP-RCM projections
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<p><span>Flash floods are a significant natural hazard in the Alpine region (FOEN, 2010). With changing rainfall regimes and decreased snow accumulation due to climate change, the risk of flash flood occurrence and timing thereof could change as well (Etchevers et al., 2002).</span></p><p><span>In this study the frequency and occurrence of flash floods in the Alpine region is estimated for current and future climate (RCP8.5) using state-of-the-art high-resolution convection permitting climate models (CP-RCMs). For the historical period and far future (2100), data from an ensemble of convection permitting climate models (Ban et al., submitted 2019) was used to drive a high-resolution distributed hydrological model, i.e. the wflow_sbm model (Imhoff et al., 2019, Verseveld et al., 2020). The model domains cover the mountainous parts of the Danube, Rhone, Rhine and Po located in the Alps. &#160;The CP-RCM time-series available are of limited length due to computational constrains. At the same time the locations of flash floods vary per year therefore a regional scale analysis is made to assess whether in general the severity, frequency and timing of flash floods in the Alps will likely change under changing climate conditions.</span></p><p><span>This research is embedded in the EU H2020 project EUCP (EUropean Climate Prediction system) (https://www.eucp-project.eu/), which aims to support climate adaptation and mitigation decisions for the coming decades by developing a regional climate prediction and projection system based on high-resolution climate models for Europe.</span></p><p>References:</p><p>Etchevers, P.<span>, </span>Golaz, C.<span>, </span>Habets, F.<span>, and </span>Noilhan, J.<span>, </span>Impact of a climate change on the Rhone river catchment hydrology<span>, J. Geophys. Res., 107( D16), doi:, 2002. </span></p><p><span>Federal office for the environment FOEN (2010) Environment Switzerland 2011, Bern and Neuchatel 2011. Retrieved from www.environment-stat.admin.ch</span></p><p><span>Imhoff, R.O., W. van Verseveld, B. van Osnabrugge, A.H. Weerts, 2019. Scaling point-scale pedotransfer functions parameter estimates for seamless large-domain high-resolution distributed hydrological modelling: An example for the Rhine river. Submitted to Water Resources Research, 2019.</span></p><p><span>N. Ban, E. Brisson, C. Caillaud, E. Coppola, E. Pichelli, S. Sobolowski, &#8230;, M.J. Zander (submitted 2019): &#8220;The first multi-model ensemble of regional climate simulations at the kilometer-scale resolution, Part I: Evaluation of precipitation&#8221;, manuscript submitted for publication.</span></p>Keywords:
Flash flood
Transient climate simulation
Climate commitment
Climate change scenario
Uncertainty Quantification
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Abstract Using the results from three global climate models (GCMs) and seven regional climate models (RCMs), summer monsoon climate changes during 2041–2060 over Indian Peninsula are projected based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change A1B emission scenario. For the control climate of 1981–2000, most nested RCMs can improve the temporal‐spatial distributions of temperature and precipitation over Indian Peninsula compared to the driving GCM of European Centre/Hamburg Fifth Generation (ECHAM5). Most nested RCMs produce advanced monsoon onset for control climate, which is similar to the result of driving GCM of ECHAM5. For future climate widespread summer warming is projected over Indian Peninsula by all climate models, with the Multi‐RCMs ensemble mean (MME) temperature increasing of 1°C to 2.5°C and the maximum warming center located in northern Indian Peninsula. The disagreement in precipitation changes projected by RCMs indicates that the surface climate change on regional scale is not only dominated by the large‐scale forcing which is provided by driving GCM but also sensitive to RCM' internal physics. Overall, wetter condition is shown in MME with significant increase of monsoon rainfall over southern India, with intermodel spread ranging from −8.9% to 14.8%. Driven by same GCM, most RCMs project advanced monsoon onset while delayed onset is found in two Regional Climate Model (RegCM3) projections, indicating uncertainty can be expected in the Indian Summer Monsoon onset. All climate models except Conformal‐Cubic Atmospheric Model with equal resolution (referred as CCAMP) and two RegCM3 models project stronger summer monsoon during 2041–2060.
Peninsula
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Representative Concentration Pathways
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CR Climate Research Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsSpecials CR 64:141-158 (2015) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/cr01302 Assessment of precipitation climatology in an ensemble of CORDEX-East Asia regional climate simulations Bo Huang*, Stefan Polanski, Ulrich Cubasch Institute of Meteorology, Freie Universität Berlin, Carl-Heinrich-Becker-Weg 6-10, 12165 Berlin, Germany *Corresponding author: huangb@zedat.fu-berlin.de ABSTRACT: An ensemble of regional climate simulations from the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment in East Asia (CORDEX-East Asia) was analysed to evaluate the ability of 5 regional climate models (RCMs) and their ensemble mean in reproducing the key features of present-day precipitation (1989-2008). We emphasised (1) an extreme rainfall event, (2) seasonal climatology, (3) annual cycles and inter-annual variability and (4) the monsoon characteristics. We highlighted 4 sub-monsoon regions, viz. South Asian Summer Monsoon (SAS), the East Asian Summer Monsoon (EAS), the Western North Pacific Tropical Monsoon (WNP) and the Australian-Maritime Continent Monsoon (AUSMC). We found that the RCMs showed a reasonable performance to capture the extreme rainfall event in 1998. The RCMs simulated the seasonal mean, annual cycle and inter-annual variability acceptably. However, individual models exhibited significant biases in some sub-regions and seasons. Moreover, most of the RCMs significantly improved their performance in capturing precipitation climatology and monsoon characteristics over the Korean Peninsula, the Korea Strait and southern Japan. Based upon this performance study, we conclude that the present set of RCMs from CORDEX can be used to provide useful information on climate projections over East Asia. KEY WORDS: CORDEX-East Asia · Regional climate model · Ensemble simulations · Precipitation climatology · Monsoon characteristics Full text in pdf format PreviousNextCite this article as: Huang B, Polanski S, Cubasch U (2015) Assessment of precipitation climatology in an ensemble of CORDEX-East Asia regional climate simulations. Clim Res 64:141-158. https://doi.org/10.3354/cr01302 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in CR Vol. 64, No. 2. Online publication date: July 29, 2015 Print ISSN: 0936-577X; Online ISSN: 1616-1572 Copyright © 2015 Inter-Research.
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Tropical Atlantic
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Abstract The ability of regional climate models (RCMs) to accurately simulate the current climate is increasingly important for impact assessments over Southeast Asia (SEA), identified as one of the world's most vulnerable regions to climate change. In this study, we evaluate the performance of a set of regional high‐resolution simulations from the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment‐SEA (CORDEX‐SEA) in simulating rainfall over the region. Simulations of the 1982–2005 seasonal mean climatology of daily precipitation and precipitation distribution over land are compared to observations from different sources (i.e., in situ‐based and satellite‐based). We also evaluate to what extent the precipitation distribution in RCMs is closer to observations than their associated forcing global climate models (GCMs). Observational estimates of precipitation over SEA have large uncertainties, making the model evaluations complicated. Despite these difficulties, our results highlight that RCMs can reproduce some complexities in the spatial distribution of seasonal rainfall but generally have a larger wet bias than GCMs. This is particularly true for the extremes in which RCMs show a large overestimation of rainfall intensity. There are some precipitation quantiles and grid points in which RCMs show limited reductions in biases compared to observations, but there is no consistency across all simulations and RCMs are generally further away from observations than their forcing GCMs. We find that greater intensity in RCMs over CORDEX‐SEA compared to their associated forcing GCMs is firstly associated with the increased supply of moisture from both local and large‐scale sources. Second, a widespread increase in convective precipitation is found across the region in RCMs. Our findings suggest that a model's ability to simulate precipitation over the region relies more on the RCM setup itself (e.g., parameterization scheme), rather than its forcing GCM. This should be considered when assessing the reliability of RCM precipitation simulations for future projections.
Forcing (mathematics)
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Forcing (mathematics)
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Representative Concentration Pathways
East Asian Monsoon
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Teleconnection
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Abstract This study evaluates the ability of 10 regional climate models (RCMs) from the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) in simulating the characteristics of rainfall patterns over eastern Africa. The seasonal climatology, annual rainfall cycles, and interannual variability of RCM output have been assessed over three homogeneous subregions against a number of observational datasets. The ability of the RCMs in simulating large-scale global climate forcing signals is further assessed by compositing the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) events. It is found that most RCMs reasonably simulate the main features of the rainfall climatology over the three subregions and also reproduce the majority of the documented regional responses to ENSO and IOD forcings. At the same time the analysis shows significant biases in individual models depending on subregion and season; however, the ensemble mean has better agreement with observation than individual models. In general, the analysis herein demonstrates that the multimodel ensemble mean simulates eastern Africa rainfall adequately and can therefore be used for the assessment of future climate projections for the region.
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The flash flood in the town of Mandra, Attica, in 2017 that had a return period equal to approximately T = 150 years was one of the most disastrous floods in Greece. Four years later, flood protection works designed for T = 50 years were built. In this work, we pose the research question 'How would this disastrous flood have behaved if flood protection works were built?' To answer this question, we employed the HEC-RAS 1D/2D model, over a detailed DSM, that we calibrated with field measurements to simulate the flood of 2017. We derived the following conclusions: (1) Flooding of the main streets still occurs with 15–25% lower flow velocities and 19–29% lower water depths. (2) The total extent of the inundation areas is reduced by 17%. (3) Works delay flood arrival by approximately 1.5 hour, thus providing the opportunity for an Early Warning System to respond more effectively.
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