Authors: Michael R Grose Stuart P Corney Jack J Katzfey James C Bennett Gregory K Holz Christopher J White Nathaniel L Bindoff
Publish Date: 2012/06/09
Volume: 40, Issue: 7-8, Pages: 2035-2048
Abstract
Coupled ocean–atmosphere general circulation models GCMs lack sufficient resolution to model the regional detail of changes to mean circulation and rainfall with projected climate warming In this paper changes in mean circulation and rainfall in GCMs are compared to those in a variable resolution regional climate model the Conformal Cubic Atmospheric Model CCAM under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario The study site is Tasmania Australia which is positioned within the midlatitude westerlies of the southern hemisphere CCAM projects a different response in mean sea level pressure and midlatitude westerly circulation to climate warming to the GCMs used as input and shows greater regional detail of the boundaries between regions of increasing and decreasing rainfall Changes in mean circulation dominate the mean rainfall response in western Tasmania whereas changes to rainfall in the East Coast are less related to mean circulation changes CCAM projects an amplification of the dominant westerly circulation over Tasmania and this amplifies the seasonal cycle of wet winters and dry summers in the west There is a larger change in the strength than in the incidence of westerly circulation and rainfall events We propose the regional climate model displays a more sensitive atmospheric response to the different rates of warming of land and sea than the GCMs as input The regional variation in these results highlight the need for dynamical downscaling of coupled general circulation models to finely resolve the influence of mean circulation and boundaries between regions of projected increases and decreases in rainfallThe authors would like to acknowledge JL McGregor CAWCR for providing the CCAM model and assisting in running the simulations Thanks to WF Budd for advice and assistance in the development of the scientific approach We thank the two anonymous referees for their considered and helpful comments This work was supported by the Australian government’s Cooperative Research Centres Program through the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre ACE CRC Climate Futures for Tasmania is possible with support through funding and research of a consortium of state and national partners We acknowledge the modelling groups the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison PCMDI and the WCRP’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling WGCM for their roles in making available the WCRP CMIP3 multimodel dataset Support of this dataset is provided by the Office of Science US Department of Energy
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