Evaluation and future projections of temperature, precipitation and wind extremes over Europe in an ensemble of regional climate simulations

By Grigory Nikulin∗, Erik Kjellstro¨m, Ulf Hansson, G. Strandberg, A. Ullerstig. 2011

385 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Temperature, precipitation and wind extremes over Europe are examined in an ensemble of RCA3 regional climate model simulations driven by six different global climate models (ECHAM5, CCSM3, HadCM3, CNRM, BCM and IPSL) under the SRES A1B emission scenario. The extremes are expressed in terms of the 20-yr return values of annual temperature and wind extremes and seasonal precipitation extremes. The ensemble shows reduction of recurrence time of warm extremes from 20 yr in 1961–1990 (CTL) to 1–2 yr over southern Europe and to 5 yr over Scandinavia in 2071–2100 (SCN) while cold extremes, defined for CTL, almost disappear in the future. The recurrence time of intense precipitation reduces from 20 yr in CTL to 6–10 yr in SCN over northern and central Europe in summer and even more to 2–4 yr in Scandinavia in winter. The projected changes in wind extremes have a large spread among the six simulations with a disperse tendency (1–2 m s−1) of strengthening north of 45◦N and weakening south of it which is sensitive to the number of simulations in the ensemble. Changes in temperature extremes are more robust compared to those in precipitation extremes while there is less confidence on changes in wind extremes.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ebd03c478baf2fa2da797c38cd46b040f325e339

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Citations in the corpus

The European climate under a 2 °C global warming (2014, methodology): “The approach closely follows that of Nikulin et al (2011) and further details are provided therein.”
Consequences of More Intensive Forestry for the Sustainable Management of Forest Soils and Waters (2011, background): “Consequently, the length of the snow-covered season, the timing and magnitude of spring runoff, and the number of extreme events could be altered in the future [85].”
Climate change multi‐model projections for temperature extremes in Portugal (2014, background): “Furthermore, in conjunction with a gradual warming throughout the next decades, these extremes are expected to increase, in both frequency and strength (Beniston et al., 2007; Fischer and Schär, 2010; Nikulin et al., 2011).”
The Rossby Centre Regional Climate model RCA3: model description and performance (2011, background): “Modelling studies suggest Tellus 63A (2011), 1 this trend may continue into the future (Nikulin et al., 2011; López-Moreno and Beniston, 2009).”