EURO-CORDEX: New high-resolution climate change projections for European impact research

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

  • Daniela Jacob
  • Juliane Petersen
  • Bastian Eggert
  • Antoinette Alias
  • Ole Bøssing Christensen
  • Laurens M. Bouwer
  • Alain Braun
  • Augustin Colette
  • Michel Déqué
  • Goran Georgievski
  • Elena Georgopoulou
  • Andreas Gobiet
  • Laurent Menut
  • Grigory Nikulin
  • Andreas Haensler
  • Nils Hempelmann
  • Colin Jones
  • Klaus Keuler
  • Sari Kovats
  • Nico Kröner
  • And 19 others
  • Sven Kotlarski
  • Arne Kriegsmann
  • Eric Martin
  • Erik van Meijgaard
  • Christopher Moseley
  • Susanne Pfeifer
  • Swantje Preuschmann
  • Christine Radermacher
  • Kai Radtke
  • Diana Rechid
  • Mark Rounsevell
  • Patrick Samuelsson
  • Samuel Somot
  • Jean Francois Soussana
  • Claas Teichmann
  • Riccardo Valentini
  • Robert Vautard
  • Björn Weber
  • Pascal Yiou

A new high-resolution regional climate change ensemble has been established for Europe within the World Climate Research Program Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (EURO-CORDEX) initiative. The first set of simulations with a horizontal resolution of 12.5 km was completed for the new emission scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 with more simulations expected to follow. The aim of this paper is to present this data set to the different communities active in regional climate modelling, impact assessment and adaptation. The EURO-CORDEX ensemble results have been compared to the SRES A1B simulation results achieved within the ENSEMBLES project. The large-scale patterns of changes in mean temperature and precipitation are similar in all three scenarios, but they differ in regional details, which can partly be related to the higher resolution in EURO-CORDEX. The results strengthen those obtained in ENSEMBLES, but need further investigations. The analysis of impact indices shows that for RCP8.5, there is a substantially larger change projected for temperature-based indices than for RCP4.5. The difference is less pronounced for precipitation-based indices. Two effects of the increased resolution can be regarded as an added value of regional climate simulations. Regional climate model simulations provide higher daily precipitation intensities, which are completely missing in the global climate model simulations, and they provide a significantly different climate change of daily precipitation intensities resulting in a smoother shift from weak to moderate and high intensities.

Original languageEnglish
JournalRegional Environmental Change
Volume14
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)563-578
Number of pages16
ISSN1436-3798
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 04.2014
Externally publishedYes

    Research areas

  • Dry spells, EURO-CORDEX, Heat wave, Heavy precipitation, Impact indices, Regional climate change
  • Environmental Governance