A team of scientists from the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP), Pusan National University in South Korea and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) has created a high-resolution climate model. According to the research, published in the open-access journal Earth System Dynamics, the model provides unprecedented insights into Earth’s future climate and its variability.
Weather computer model
Using the AWI-CM3 Earth system model, a novel iterative global modeling protocol, and two of South Korea’s supercomputers (Aleph at the Institute for Basic Science and Guru at the Korea Meteorological Administration), the researchers simulated climate change at scales of 9km in the atmosphere and 4-25km in the ocean. These extensive computer model simulations offer a more accurate representation of future climate conditions, enabling better planning for climate adaptation.
The AWI-CM3 high-resolution model represents global climate, including small-scale phenomena, such as rainfall in mountainous regions, coastal and island climate processes, hurricanes and ocean turbulence. By resolving more regional details and their interactions with the large-scale atmosphere and ocean circulations, the model reportedly demonstrates better performance than lower-resolution climate models.
A main product of the simulations was a set of detailed global maps of expected climate change (such as temperature, rainfall, winds, ocean currents, etc) for an anticipated 1°C future global warming.
Moon Ja-Yeon from the ICCP, and lead author of the study, stated, “It is important to keep in mind that global warming is spatially quite heterogenous. For a 1°C global temperature increase, the Siberian and Canadian Arctic will warm by about 2°C, whereas the Arctic Ocean will experience warming of up to 5°C. In high mountain regions, such as the Himalayas, the Andes and the Hindu Kush, the model simulates a 45-60% acceleration relative to the global mean.”
Sharing the knowledge
To ensure broad access to these high-resolution climate projections, the team launched an interactive data platform, where users can explore future climate change on regional and global scales. Normalized climate change data for a 1°C global warming level can be downloaded and opened directly in the Google Earth application. This data can provide information on expected future changes in climate variables, such as wind speed and clouds, which are relevant for the future deployment of wind and solar farms, respectively.
Prof. Thomas Jung from the AWI and co-corresponding author of the study, commented, “Our study also highlights the regional impacts of major modes of climate variability, such as the Madden Julian Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, as well as their response to greenhouse warming.”
Regional findings
According to the AWI-CM3 simulations, the amplitude of the Madden Julian Oscillation and of the alternating El Niño and La Niña events will increase in the future, which will lead to intensified rainfall impacts in affected regions. ​The simulations also indicate an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events (>50mm/day) in areas such as eastern Asia, the Himalayas, the Andes, Amazonia, mountaintops in Africa and the east coast of North America, with significant implications for flooding, erosion and landslides.
Prof. Axel Timmermann, director of the ICCP and co-corresponding author of the study, said, “Most global climate models used in the assessment reports of the IPCC are too coarse to resolve small islands, such as those in the western tropical Pacific. These islands are already threatened by global sea-level rise. Our new climate model simulations now provide new regional insights into what these regions can expect in terms of changes in ocean currents, temperatures, rainfall patterns and weather extremes. We hope that our dataset will be used extensively by planners, policy- and decision-makers and the public.”
In related news, scientists at Sun Yat-Sen University recently developed SYCIM2.0, an Earth system model built for climate simulation