Journal
BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY
Volume 102, Issue 6, Pages E1206-E1223Publisher
AMER METEOROLOGICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-20-0020.1
Keywords
Climate change; Climate prediction; Convective storms; Climate models; Model evaluation/performance
Categories
Funding
- Natural Environment Research Council/Department for International Development via the Future Climates for Africa (FCFA)-funded program
- Improving Model Processes for African Climate (IMPALA) project [NE/M017265/1, NE/M017214/1, NE/M017230/1, NE/M017206/1, NE/M017176/1]
- Integrating Hydro-Climate Science into Policy Decision for Climate-Resilient Infrastructure and Livelihoods in East Africa (HyCRISTAL) project [NE/M019985/1, NE/M02038X/1, NE/M020371/1]
- African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis 2050 (AMMA-2050) project [NE/M020428/1, NE/M019969/1, NE/M019977/1, NE/M020126/1]
- Future Resilience for African CiTies And Lands (FRACTAL) project [NE/M020061/1]
- Uncertainty reduction in Models For Understanding deveLopment Applications (UMFULA) [NE/M020207]
- NERC [NE/M020126/1, nceo020006, NE/M017230/1, NE/M020320/1, NE/M019969/1, NE/M020428/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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Through Pan-Africa convection-permitting regional climate model simulations, the impact of high resolution and explicit representation of atmospheric moist convection on the present and future climate of Africa has been studied, showing significant improvements in rainfall characteristics, circulation, and extremes. These simulations are expected to become a routine component of climate projection.
Pan-Africa convection-permitting regional climate model simulations have been performed to study the impact of high resolution and the explicit representation of atmospheric moist convection on the present and future climate of Africa. These unique simulations have allowed European and African climate scientists to understand the critical role that the representation of convection plays in the ability of a contemporary climate model to capture climate and climate change, including many impact-relevant aspects such as rainfall variability and extremes. There are significant improvements in not only the small-scale characteristics of rainfall such as its intensity and diurnal cycle, but also in the large-scale circulation. Similarly, effects of explicit convection affect not only projected changes in rainfall extremes, dry spells, and high winds, but also continental-scale circulation and regional rainfall accumulations. The physics underlying such differences are in many cases expected to be relevant to all models that use parameterized convection. In some cases physical understanding of small-scale change means that we can provide regional decision-makers with new scales of information across a range of sectors. We demonstrate the potential value of these simulations both as scientific tools to increase climate process understanding and, when used with other models, for direct user applications. We describe how these ground-breaking simulations have been achieved under the U.K. Government's Future Climate for Africa Programme. We anticipate a growing number of such simulations, which we advocate should become a routine component of climate projection, and encourage international coordination of such computationally and human-resource expensive simulations as effectively as possible.
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