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Presentation Oral presentation
Title Regional Climate simulations for the BIOTA South region - model performance and first results of future climate projections

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Short title Regional climate simulations

Author(s) Hänsler, A.; Hagemann, S.; Jacob, D.

Presenting author ---

Institution(s) Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany

Keywords Regional Climate Modeling, Land – Atmosphere interactions, Climate Change scenarios, Land use / land cover change

Abstract Within the BIOTA South project the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) is investigating the interactions of land use/ land cover changes and the regional and local climate. While the process of anthropogenic emissions is fairly well established in state-of-the art climate model simulations, possible impact of land use changes on the climate is mostly neglected in long-term climate simulations up to now. However, especially over Africa’s semiarid regions, land surface feedbacks seem to have a significant influence on the regional climate.

To further investigate these effects we are applying the regional climate model REMO over the southern African region with a focus on the BIOTA south region.
The simulations will be conducted using both, static and transient representations of the model land surface. The model is integrated on 1/6 degree horizontal resolution for the time period 1950 to 2100. Lateral boundary conditions for the simulations are obtained from the MPI-M’s global climate model (ECHAM5/MPIOM) simulations, that have been performed for the 4th assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Focusing on land – atmosphere interactions, we discuss the ability of REMO to reproduce the regional climate characteristics. This analysis acts as a base to evaluate the model performance for the region. Model evaluation is of tremendous importance to assure the quality of the REMO output data, which will be provided to BIOTA partners once the simulations are completed. Further, we show projected future changes over the BIOTA South region obtained from a climate change simulation based on the IPCC - A1B scenario.

Congress Topic Observation System

Topic No. 1.7
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Ref. No. 623