Abstract
The characteristics of tropical cyclone (TC) activity over five TC basins lying within four Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) domains are examined for present and future climate conditions using a new ensemble of simulations completed as part of the CORDEX-CORE initiative with the regional climate model RegCM4. The simulations are conducted at a 25 km horizontal grid spacing and are driven by three CMIP5 general circulation models (GCMs) under two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.6 and RCP8.5). The RegCM4 captures most features of the observed TC climatology, except for the TC intensity, which is thus statistically adjusted using a bias correction procedure to account for the effect of the coarse model resolution. The RegCM4 exhibits an improved simulation of several TC statistics compared to the driving GCMs, over most basins analyzed. In future climate conditions we find significant increases in TC frequency over the North Indian Ocean, the Northwest Pacific and Eastern Pacific regions, which are consistent with an increase in mid-tropospheric relative humidity. The North Atlantic and Australasia regions show a decrease in TC frequency, mostly associated with an increase in wind shear. We also find a consistent increase in future storm rainfall rates associated with TCs and in the frequency of the most intense TCs over most domains. Our study shows robust responses often, but not always, in line with previous studies, still implying the presence of significant uncertainties in the projection of TC characteristics, which need to be addressed using large ensembles of simulations with high-resolution models.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1507-1531 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| Journal | Climate Dynamics |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue number | 5-6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2021 |
Funding
We greatly appreciate the comments and suggestions of the editor and three anonymous reviewers, which helped improve this manuscript. The RegCM4 simulations for the ICTP institute have been completed, thanks to the support of the CINECA supercomputing center, Bologna, Italy, and ISCRA projects HP10BDU7TR and HP10BQCFJ2. The authors would like to thank Graziano Giuliani and Ivan Girotto for their constant support in the preparation of the simulations used in this paper. The authors would also like to thank the CMIP5 and Kevin Hodges, as well as the ESGF for providing access to their database, where most of the data was available. The study was also supported by the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, the National Climate-Computing Research Center at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, all of whom provided access to their simulation data. The observed data were provided by NOAA (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ibtracs/index.php?name=bib ) and by Hylke Beck, the developer of the MSWEP data (http://www.gloh2o.org/ ). M. Reale has been supported in this work by OGS and CINECA under HPC-TRES award number 2015-07 and by the project FAIRSEA (Fisheries in the Adriatic Region—a Shared Ecosystem. Approach) funded by the 2014–2020 Interreg V‐A Italy—Croatia CBC Programme (Standard project ID 10046951). We greatly appreciate the comments and suggestions of the editor and three anonymous reviewers, which helped improve this manuscript. The RegCM4 simulations for the ICTP institute have been completed, thanks to the support of the CINECA supercomputing center, Bologna, Italy, and ISCRA projects HP10BDU7TR and HP10BQCFJ2. The authors would like to thank Graziano Giuliani and Ivan Girotto for their constant support in the preparation of the simulations used in this paper. The authors would also like to thank the CMIP5 and Kevin Hodges, as well as the ESGF for providing access to their database, where most of the data was available. The study was also supported by the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, the National Climate-Computing Research Center at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, all of whom provided access to their simulation data. The observed data were provided by NOAA ( https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ibtracs/index.php?name=bib ) and by Hylke Beck, the developer of the MSWEP data ( http://www.gloh2o.org/ ). M. Reale has been supported in this work by OGS and CINECA under HPC-TRES award number 2015-07 and by the project FAIRSEA (Fisheries in the Adriatic Region—a Shared Ecosystem. Approach) funded by the 2014–2020 Interreg V‐A Italy—Croatia CBC Programme (Standard project ID 10046951).
Keywords
- CORDEX-CORE
- Climate change
- Regional climate model
- Tropical cyclones