10.5 Regional Climate Models
Since the SAR, much insight has been provided into fundamental issues concerning
the nested regional modelling technique.
Multi-year to multi-decadal simulations must be used for climate change studies
to provide meaningful climate statistics, to identify significant systematic
model errors and climate changes relative to internal model and observed climate
variability, and to allow the atmospheric model to equilibrate with the land
surface conditions (e.g., Jones et al., 1997; Machenhauer et al., 1998; Christensen
1999; McGregor et al., 1999; Kato et al., 2001).
The choice of an appropriate domain is not trivial. The influence of the boundary
forcing can reduce as region size increases (Jones et al., 1995; Jacob and Podzun,
1997) and may be dominated by the internal model physics for certain variables
and seasons (Noguer et al., 1998). This can lead to the RCM solution significantly
departing from the driving data, which can make the interpretation of down-scaled
regional climate changes more difficult (Jones et al., 1997). The domain size
has to be large enough so that relevant local forcings and effects of enhanced
resolution are not damped or contaminated by the application of the boundary
conditions (Warner et al., 1997). The exact location of the lateral boundaries
can influence the sensitivity to internal parameters (Seth and Giorgi, 1998)
or may have no significant impact (Bhaskaran et al., 1996). Finally, location
of boundaries over areas with significant topography may lead to inconsistencies
and noise generation (e.g., Hong and Juang, 1998).
Surface forcing due to land, ocean and sea ice greatly affects regional climate
simulation (e.g., Giorgi et al., 1996; Seth and Giorgi, 1998; Wei and Fu, 1998;
Christensen, 1999; Pan et al., 1999; Pielke et al., 1999; Rinke and Dethloff,
1999; Chase et al., 2000; Maslanik et al., 2000, Rummukainen et al., 2000).
In particular, RCM experiments do not start with equilibrium conditions and
therefore the initialisation of surface variables, such as soil moisture and
temperature, is important. For example, to reach equilibrium it can require
a few seasons for the rooting zone (about 1 m depth) and years for the deep
soils (Christensen, 1999).
The choice of RCM resolution can modulate the effects of physical forcings
and parametrizations (Giorgi and Marinucci, 1996a; Laprise et al., 1998). The
description of the hydrologic cycle generally improves with increasing resolution
due to the better topographical representation (Christensen et al., 1998; Leung
and Ghan, 1998). Resolving more of the spectrum of atmospheric motions at high
resolution improves the representation of cyclonic systems and vertical velocities,
but can sometimes worsen aspects of the model climatology (Machenhauer et al.,
1998; Kato et al., 1999). Different resolutions may be required to capture relevant
forcings in different sub-regions, which can be achieved via multiple one-way
nesting (Christensen et al., 1998; McGregor et al., 1999), two-way nesting (Liston
et al., 1999) or smoothly varying horizontal grids (Qian and Giorgi, 1999).
Only limited studies of the effects of changing vertical resolution have been
published (Kato et al., 1999).
RCM model physics configurations are derived either from a pre-existing (and
well tested) limited area model system with modifications suitable for climate
application (Pielke et al., 1992; Giorgi et al., 1993b,c; Leung and Ghan, 1995,
1998; Copeland et al., 1996; Miller and Kim, 1997; Liston and Pielke 2000; Rummukainen
et al., 2000) or are implemented directly from a GCM (McGregor and Walsh, 1993;
Jones et al., 1995; Christensen et al., 1996; Laprise et al., 1998). In the
first approach, each set of parametrizations is developed and optimised for
the respective model resolutions. However, this makes interpreting differences
between nested model and driving GCM more difficult, as these will not result
only from changes in resolution. Also, the different model physics schemes may
result in inconsistencies near the boundaries (Machenhauer et al., 1998; Rummukainen
et al., 2000). The second approach maximises compatibility between the models.
However, physics schemes developed for coarse resolution GCMs may not be adequate
for the high resolutions used in nested regional models and may, at least, require
recalibration (Giorgi and Marinucci, 1996a; Laprise et al., 1998; see also Section
10.4). Overall, both strategies have shown performance of similar quality
(e.g., IPCC, 1996), and either one may be preferable (Giorgi and Mearns, 1999).
In the context of climate change simulations, if there is no resolution dependence,
the second approach may be preferable to maximise consistency between RCM and
GCM responses to the radiative forcing.
Ocean RCMs have been developed during the last decades for a broad variety
of applications. To date, the specific use of these models, in a context similar
to the use of nested atmospheric RCMs for climate change studies, is very limited
(Kauker, 1998). Although the performance of ocean RCMs has yet to be assessed,
it is known that a very high resolution, few tens of kilometres or less, is
needed for accurate ocean simulations.
The construction of coupled RCMs is a very recent development. They comprise
atmospheric RCMs coupled to other models of climate system components, such
as lake, ocean/sea ice, chemistry/aerosol, and land biosphere/hydrology models
(Hostetler et al., 1994; Lynch et al., 1995, 1997a,b, 1998; Leung et al., 1996;
Bailey et al., 1997; Kim et al., 1998; Qian and Giorgi 1999; Small et al., 1999a,b;
Bailey and Lynch, 2000a,b; Mabuchi et al., 2000; Maslanik et al., 2000; Rummukainen
et al., 2000; Tsvetsinskaya et al., 2000; Weisse et al., 2000). This promises
the development of coupled �regional climate system models�.
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