Transcript South-Asia

CORDEX Science Advisory Team 1st Session
16-17 May 2014
ICTP, Trieste, Italy
Updates from the CORDEX South-Asia
(obo R. Krishnan)
J. Sanjay
Centre for Climate Change Research (CCCR)
Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, INDIA
Email: [email protected]
Highlights
CORDEX South Asia
 WCRP CORDEX South Asia Planning Meeting in partnership with WCRP-WMO,
ADB, START, ICTP, CSAG , SMHI & CCCR-IITM was hosted by IITM, Pune,
India, 25 – 26 February 2012
 CORDEX South Asia Regional Climate Model Simulation Experiments
 CCCR-IITM Lead Role in generation, hosting and dissemination of CORDEX
South Asia outputs (Coordinator – Dr. R. Krishnan)
 Hosting of Earth System Grid (ESG) data nodes at CCCR-IITM
Highlights
CORDEX South Asia
 The 1st WCRP CORDEX South Asia Training Workshop in partnership with
CCCR-IITM, START, ICTP, CSAG, SMHI and ICSU-ROAP was held at IITM,
Pune, India, 17–20 October 2012
 The four day training workshop focused on skill development in analysis and
verification results from the CORDEX Climate models. This capacity building
effort helped to foster trans–disciplinary collaborations between individuals
from the physical sciences and the VIA research community.

Integrating and delivering scientific data services to the CORDEX-South Asia
community
• Archived CCCR-IITM RCM runs (IITM-LMDz, IITM-RegCM4) in CORDEX
specified format
• The Integrated Rule-Oriented Data System (iRODS) is implemented in the CCCRIITM Climate Data Portal for managing and sharing CORDEX data
• CORDEX South Asia data (50km) is released by CCCR-IITM:
http://cccr.tropmet.res.in/cordex/files/downloads.jsp
• Collaboration with NASA JPL RCMES (Regional Climate Model Evaluation System)
team for implementing RCMES as a tool for evaluating CORDEX South Asia RCMs
Highlights
CORDEX South Asia
 The 2nd WCRP CORDEX
Science and Training Workshop in South Asia
In partnership with WCRP-CORDEX, MAIRS, APN, ICIMOD, CCCR-IITM &
IAP was hosted by ICIMOD, Kathmandu, Nepal, 27 – 30 August 2013
 This workshop helped in improving the communication between end users needs
and climate modeling communities to strengthen the regional climate
knowledge.
 International Conference on Regional Climate – CORDEX 2013 in partnership
between WCRP, the European Commission and IPCC 4 – 7 November, 2013
Brussels, Belgium
 Attendance: 500+ participants from 97 countries, South-Asian participation
was co-ordinated by IITM
 Great opportunity for Asian-Pacific attendees to meet with their peers and the
wider CORDEX network
 Presented preliminary results from CORDEX South Asia RCMs
Spatial pattern correlations and Standardized deviations of the
simulated annual mean precipitation and surface air temperature
climatology (1990-2004) with respect to the observed (CRU) data
over the South Asia land region (60oE-100oE; 5oN-35oN)
10 CMIP5 AOGCMs (C1-C10; green triangles), 6 RCMs driven with ERAI (E1-E6; blue
squares), 5 RCMs driven with CMIP5 (H1-H5; red circles). The CM, EM, HM and EI denote
their ensemble means and ERAI respectively.
Sanjay et al. (http://cordex2013.wcrp-climate.org/posters/P3_27_Sanjay.pdf)
Highlights
CORDEX South Asia
Future Plans
 Strengthen dissemination of CORDEX-South Asia Multi-Model outputs from
RCP4.5 scenario (2006- 2100)
 Participation as a Earth System Grid (ESG) node for publishing CORDEX products
 Multi-model evaluation system: e.g., Regional Climate Model Evaluation System
(RCMES)
 Co-ordination of CORDEX training planned in 2014 (East Asia) & 2015 (Southeast
Asia)
 Develop synergistic linkage between climate downscaling & VIA user communities in
Asia e.g., CARIAA
16/May/2014: R. Krishnan
Inputs for "Metrics for regional targeted assessment" for the South Asian region, the
important components for targeted climate assessments are:
1) Southwest Monsoon (June - September): In addition to mean and variability of
rainfall, metrics need to be developed for diagnosis of monsoon circulation (eg. Lowlevel winds, upper level tropical easterly jet), vertical distribution of vorticity,
divergence and specific humidity over the Indo-Gangetic plains, monsoon lows and
depressions, active / break monsoon conditions, intraseasonal variations in monsoon
rainfall and circulation. Majority of CMIP5 models underestimate mean monsoon rainfall
over the Indo-Gangetic plains. I think this is partly due to poor representation of
west-northwest moving monsoon synoptic systems in the CMIP5 models. If CORDEX
models can improve this issue, it will be a real value addition.
2) Tropical cyclones (post-monsoon and pre-monsoon season): A systematic assessment
of TCs over the North Indian Ocean and their response to climate change using
CORDEX multi-models will be useful information.
3) Western disturbances: There is great potential from CORDEX models to understand
how Western Disturbances (WDs) might respond to climate change. Unlike monsoon
synoptic disturbances, WDs are more predictable because of their similarity to midlatitude baroclinic systems. Since CORDEX models use high-resolution, they provide
important information about rainfall and temperature variations over the Himalayan
Hindu-Kush region associated with WDs.
A student working on this problem (Climate Dynamics online). This work was based on
observations and reanalysis data. We intend to examine CORDEX models for this study
as well.
Personally, I am not comfortable with the idea of prescriptive "Metrics" in the monsoon
region for two reasons
(a) Understanding of monsoon dynamics and variability is not mature enough for
targeted evaluations
(b) This idea also restricts one from understanding the real monsoon, because efforts
tend to focus mainly on evaluating model performance rather than the actual
phenomena.
Given the requirements of model evaluation for CORDEX, I feel we should suggest
evaluation of simple and straight forward "Metrics" in the South Asian region - which is
easy for everyone to adopt.