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Simulation of temperature and precipitation climatology for the Central Asia CORDEX domain using RegCM 4.0

• 27.12.2015
• Author:Prof .Dr. Murat Türkeş
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• 948

Tugba Ozturk , Hamza Altinsoy,Murat Türkeş,M. Levent Kurnaz Department of Physics, Faculty of Science and Arts, Bogazici University, 34342 Istanbul, Turkey 2 Physical Geography Division, Department of Geography, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, 17020 Çanakkale, Turkey 3 Department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences and Arts, Isik University, 34980 Istanbul, Turkey ABSTRACT: The Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) is a frame- work designed to coordinate international efforts on regional climate simulations. CORDEX do- mains encompass the majority of land areas of the world. Region 8 of the CORDEX basically covers Central Asia, with the corners of the domain at 54.76° N, 11.05° E; 56.48° N, 139.13° E; 18.34° N, 42.41° E; and 19.39° N, 108.44° E and with a horizontal resolution of 50 km. In the present study, the results of an experiment with the ICTP regional climate RegCM 4.0 model that was run for seasonal mean air temperature and precipitation total series are presented. The experiment consists of one simulation from 1989 to 2010 using ERA-Interim reanalysis data as the boundary condition, another simulation for the period 1970−2000 using the global climate model ECHAM5 A1B scenario data for forcing, and finally a simulation for the period 2070−2100 using the ECHAM5 A1B scenario projec- tion data for forcing. Between these 3 simulations we determined the temperature and precipitation climatology obtained from RegCM 4.0 downscaling for Region 8 of the CORDEX framework. In spite of the diverse topography of the region, the temperature and precipitation climatology obtained by RegCM 4.0 from hindcast data captures the general characteristics of the climate of Central Asia. In winter, the warm temperature bias of the forcing data is slightly decreased by regional downscaling. The influences of the Indian monsoon system are well represented, as this region covers a large area towards the southern boundary of Region 8, even though the focus of this work was to capture the general characteristics of the whole region. KEY WORDS: Climate change and variability · Regional climate modeling · Central Asia · CORDEX · Temperature and precipitation climatology For full article Ozturk et al._2012_Simulation of temp and precip for Asia by RegCM 4.0_CR_52_p63-76