TY - JOUR
T1 - Current and Future Climate Extremes Over Latin America and Caribbean
T2 - Assessing Earth System Models from High Resolution Model Intercomparison Project (HighResMIP)
AU - Avila-Diaz, Alvaro
AU - Torres, Roger Rodrigues
AU - Zuluaga, Cristian Felipe
AU - Cerón, Wilmar L.
AU - Oliveira, Lais
AU - Benezoli, Victor
AU - Rivera, Irma Ayes
AU - Marengo, Jose Antonio
AU - Wilson, Aaron B.
AU - Medeiros, Felipe
N1 - Funding Information:
Open Access funding provided by Colombia Consortium. This work was supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) under the grants 151960/2020-8 and 309215/2021-8; by the National Institute of Science and Technology for Climate Change Phase 2 under CNPq Grant 465501/2014-1; FAPESP Grants 2014/50848-9, the National Coordination for Higher Education and Training (CAPES) Grants 88887.136402-00INCT and 88887.701371/2022-00.
Funding Information:
The authors are grateful to the Natural Resources Institute of the Universidade Federal de Itajubá and the Universidad del Valle. The first author has received funding from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) under a Post-doctoral scholarship. The fourth author is “Bolsista CAPES/BRASIL” for developing a post-doctoral research fellowship in the Postgraduate Program in Climate and Environment (CLIAMB, INPA/UEA). The seventh author thanks Omar Gutierrez Cori from Sorbonne Université for the discussions to improve the manuscript. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme, which, through its Working Group on Coupled Modelling, coordinated and promoted CMIP6. We thank the climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model output, the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) to archive the data, provide access, and the multiple funding agencies supporting CMIP6 and ESGF.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2023/1
Y1 - 2023/1
N2 - Extreme temperature and precipitation events are the primary triggers of hazards, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, and landslides, with localized impacts. In this sense, the finer grids of Earth System models (ESMs) could play an essential role in better estimating extreme climate events. The performance of High Resolution Model Intercomparison Project (HighResMIP) models is evaluated using the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI) over the 1981–2014 period and future changes (2021–2050) under Shared Socioeconomic Pathway SSP5–8.5, over ten regions in Latin America and the Caribbean. The impact of increasing the horizontal resolution in estimating extreme climate variability on a regional scale is first compared against reference gridded datasets, including reanalysis, satellite, and merging products. We used three different groups based on the resolution of the model’s grid (sg): (i) low (0.8° ≤ sg ≤ 1.87°), (ii) intermediate (0.5° ≤ sg ≤ 0.7°), and (iii) high (0.23° ≥ sg ≤ 0.35°). Our analysis indicates that there was no clear evidence to support the posit that increasing horizontal resolution improves model performance. The ECMWF-IFS family of models appears to be a plausible choice to represent climate extremes, followed by the ensemble mean of HighResMIP in their intermediate resolution. For future climate, the projections indicate a consensus of temperature and precipitation climate extremes increase across most of the ten regions. Despite the uncertainties presented in this study, climate models have been and will continue to be an important tool for assessing risk in the face of extreme events.
AB - Extreme temperature and precipitation events are the primary triggers of hazards, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, and landslides, with localized impacts. In this sense, the finer grids of Earth System models (ESMs) could play an essential role in better estimating extreme climate events. The performance of High Resolution Model Intercomparison Project (HighResMIP) models is evaluated using the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI) over the 1981–2014 period and future changes (2021–2050) under Shared Socioeconomic Pathway SSP5–8.5, over ten regions in Latin America and the Caribbean. The impact of increasing the horizontal resolution in estimating extreme climate variability on a regional scale is first compared against reference gridded datasets, including reanalysis, satellite, and merging products. We used three different groups based on the resolution of the model’s grid (sg): (i) low (0.8° ≤ sg ≤ 1.87°), (ii) intermediate (0.5° ≤ sg ≤ 0.7°), and (iii) high (0.23° ≥ sg ≤ 0.35°). Our analysis indicates that there was no clear evidence to support the posit that increasing horizontal resolution improves model performance. The ECMWF-IFS family of models appears to be a plausible choice to represent climate extremes, followed by the ensemble mean of HighResMIP in their intermediate resolution. For future climate, the projections indicate a consensus of temperature and precipitation climate extremes increase across most of the ten regions. Despite the uncertainties presented in this study, climate models have been and will continue to be an important tool for assessing risk in the face of extreme events.
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U2 - 10.1007/s41748-022-00337-7
DO - 10.1007/s41748-022-00337-7
M3 - Research Article
C2 - 36569783
AN - SCOPUS:85144317980
SN - 2509-9426
VL - 7
SP - 99
EP - 130
JO - Earth Systems and Environment
JF - Earth Systems and Environment
IS - 1
ER -