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65<br />

Modeling climate over Russian regions: RCM validation and projections<br />

Igor Shkolnik, S. Efimov, T. Pavlova, E. Nadyozhina<br />

Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory, 7, Karbyshev str., 194021, St.-Petersburg, Russia, igor@main.mgo.rssi.ru<br />

Increased levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases will have<br />

bigger effects on climate in northern Eurasia than in most of<br />

other regions of the Earth. In this study the estimates of<br />

climate and its change potential are obtained using Voeikov<br />

Main geophysical observatory regional climate model<br />

(RCM) applied to the two major domains in the northern<br />

Eurasia (western Russia and Siberia) within the framework<br />

of the Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative<br />

(NEESPI).<br />

The RCM demonstrated satisfactory performance skill in<br />

reproducing 20 th century climate and its variability over the<br />

northern Eurasia. The presented analysis, in particular,<br />

addresses aspects of model validation strategies over the<br />

regions with sparce observations (e.g. Siberia and the<br />

Russian Far East) at 50 and 25 km resolution. The<br />

discretization of RCM output at daily time intervals makes it<br />

feasible to investigate statistics of high frequency climate<br />

variability and associated rare events. These events at<br />

limited modeling resolution are manifested in large-scale<br />

slowly evolving climate (weather) anomalies that can be<br />

utilized to feed different impact models for more practical<br />

assessment. Considered are some changes in the extreme<br />

indices of temperature and precipitation in 21 st century over<br />

Russia. Additionally, changes in cryosphere characteristics<br />

over parts of northern Eurasia are shown.<br />

Owing to the largest climate variability the northern Eurasia<br />

exhibits significant uncertainties in climate projections. In<br />

order to decrease the uncertainties (including those due to<br />

natural variability, model sensitivity to prescribed forcings<br />

and due to forcings themselves), large samples of RCM<br />

simulations are apparently required. Estimates of extreme<br />

events and their frequencies of occurrence also require<br />

massive RCM ensemble simulations over the region.

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