3rd HyMeX workshop 1-4 June 2009 Heraklion (Gournes), Crete-Greece
Regional climate modelling: Changes in components of the hydrological cycle under future climate conditionsMirta Patarcic (Meteorological and Hydrological Service); Lidija Srnec, Cedo Brankovic
In Meteorological and Hydrological Service we use the Regional Climate Model (RegCM) developed in International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, to dynamically downscale three realisations of present and future climate as defined by EH5OM global climate model from Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany. For future climate IPCC A2 emission scenario was used. RegCM domain covered greater part of Europe, Mediterranean area and northern part of Africa. Downscaling has been done for two 30-year periods: 1961-1990 for present climate and 2041-2070 for future climate. Horizontal resolution of regional model was 35 km in the area of 128x90 grid points centred at 46°N and 7.5°E. In vertical, model was run with 23 levels extending up to 10 hPa.
Potential contribution to Hymex program: Downscaling technique provides averaged climate on finer resolution with more details in surface fields when compared to the global model outputs. Thus, the results from RegCM simulations enable to estimate changes in the components of the water cycle e.g. precipitation, evapotranspiration and surface runoff for the Mediterranean area. Moreover, based on high frequency output from RegCM, we plan to evaluate how extreme events such as droughts and heavy precipitation episodes will evolve under future climate conditions. The analysis of climate change of the components of hydrological cycle will be performed in terms of seasonal and annual differences between future and present climate, changes in annual cycle, interannual variability, etc. The significance of the changes will be determined as well.
