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75<br />

What details can the regional climate models add to the global projections<br />

in the Carpathian Basin?<br />

Gabriella Szépszó, Gabriella Csima and András Horányi<br />

Hungarian Meteorological Service, Budapest, Hungary (szepszo.g@met.hu)<br />

1. Motivation<br />

Recently the continuously improving global climate models<br />

are providing solid basis and realistic projections for the<br />

synoptic scale characteristics of the climate, however they<br />

are at the moment largely insufficient for detailed regional<br />

scale estimations. The use of regional climate models<br />

ensures a dynamics-based opportunity to interpret and<br />

enhance the global results for regional scale. A couple of<br />

years ago two regional climate models were adapted at the<br />

Hungarian Meteorological Service (HMS): the ALADIN-<br />

Climate model developed by Météo France on the basis of<br />

the internationally developed ALADIN modelling system<br />

and the REMO model developed by the Max Planck<br />

Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. It is anticipated in<br />

Hungary that these models are able to give realistic regional<br />

climate estimations not only for the next few decades but<br />

also for the end of 21st century, particularly for the area of<br />

the Carpathian Basin. This area of interest is especially<br />

important considering the fact that one of the largest<br />

uncertainties in climate projections can be found over the<br />

Carpathian Basin as it had already been identified by former<br />

large international projects.<br />

2. Model experiments<br />

Firstly, the models were integrated for a past period (1961–<br />

1990) with the use of ERA-40 re-analyses as lateral<br />

boundary conditions in order to explore the main<br />

characteristics of the models’ behaviour in case of “quasiperfect”<br />

forcing. The model domains include continental<br />

Europe with approximately 25 km horizontal resolution. The<br />

models were also integrated with lateral boundary conditions<br />

provided by global atmosphere-ocean general circulation<br />

models: by ARPEGE/OPA in the case of ALADIN-Climate<br />

and ECHAM5/MPI-OM in the case of REMO. With the<br />

latter regional climate model a hundred-year transient run<br />

was accomplished for the period of 1951–2050, while the<br />

ALADIN-Climate simulations covered three thirty-year time<br />

slices in 1961–1990, 2021–2050, 2071–2100 over a smaller<br />

domain in its focus with Hungary on 10 km horizontal<br />

resolution. The regional models were forced with the A1B<br />

SRES emission scenario, which is considered as a “realistic”<br />

estimate for the evolution of the greenhouse gas<br />

concentrations until the end of the 21st century.<br />

3. Results<br />

Naturally, the validation of regional climate models for the<br />

past climate is an indispensable ingredient in understanding<br />

the behaviour of RCMs. This is originating from the<br />

considerations that on the one hand successful climate<br />

projections can be only expected if the models are already<br />

capable to reasonably simulate the past climate and on the<br />

other hand the biases of the model for the past might<br />

indicate and anticipate biases for the future. The model<br />

experiments for the past were validated against the CRUdataset<br />

focusing on two main variables: the mean<br />

temperature and precipitation. Regarding the future<br />

projections the change of the same parameters was<br />

investigated for the 2021–2050 period with respect to the<br />

reference 1961–1990 one. The analysis was concentrating<br />

not only on the regional results but also taking into<br />

account the driving global models’ results, in order to<br />

carefully scrutinize the possible added value of the<br />

regional climate models with respect to the global ones<br />

and to draw reliable and robust conclusions in terms of<br />

quantitative uncertainties in the projections.<br />

Figure 1 shows the change of the annual and winter<br />

precipitation over Hungary for 2021–2050 with respect to<br />

the model means in 1961–1990 on the basis of the<br />

ALADIN-Climate and REMO results. It can be concluded,<br />

that the annual change is a non-significant decrease<br />

projected quite similarly by both RCMs, however in the<br />

case of seasonal changes large differences can be<br />

experienced, which is pointing towards large uncertainties.<br />

Figure 1. The annual (top) and the winter (bottom:<br />

DJF) precipitation change over Hungary for 2021–<br />

2050 with respect to the model means in 1961–1990<br />

based on two RCMs (left: ALADIN-Climate; right:<br />

REMO).<br />

This workshop contribution will give an overview about<br />

the results of regional climate models applied at the HMS<br />

with special emphasis on their inter-comparison and<br />

evaluation with respect to the global models.<br />

References<br />

Csima, G. and Horányi, A.: Validation of the ALADIN-<br />

Climate regional climate model at the Hungarian<br />

Meteorological Service, Időjárás, 112., 3-4, pp. 155-<br />

177, 2008<br />

Szépszó, G. and Horányi, A.: Transient simulation of the<br />

REMO regional climate model and its evaluation over<br />

Hungary, Időjárás, 112., 3-4, pp. 203-231, 2008

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