Projected changes in temperature and precipitation climatology of Central Asia CORDEX Region 8 by using RegCM4.3.5

Abstract

This work investigated projected future changes in seasonal mean air temperature (°C) and precipitation (mm/day) climatology for the three periods of 2011–2040, 2041–2070, and 2071–2100, with respect to the control period of 1971–2000 for the Central Asia domain via regional climate model simulations. In order to investigate the projected changes in near future climate conditions, the Regional Climate Model, RegCM4.3.5 of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) was driven by two different CMIP5 global climate models. The HadGEM2-ES global climate model of the Met Office Hadley Centre and the MPI-ESM-MR global climate model of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology were downscaled to 50 km for the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) Region 8. We investigated the seasonal time-scale performance of RegCM4.3.5 in reproducing observed climatology over the domain of the Central Asia by using two different global climate model outputs. For the future climatology of the domain, the regional model projects relatively high warming in the warm season with a decrease in precipitation in almost all parts of the domain. A warming trend is notable, especially for the northern part of the domain during the cold season. The results of our study show that surface air temperatures in the region will increase between 3 °C and about 7 °C on average, according to the emission scenarios for the period of 2071–2100 with respect to past period of 1971–2000. Therefore, the projected warming and decrease in precipitation might adversely affect the ecological and socio-economic systems of this region, which is already a mostly arid and semi-arid environment.