Tropical-temperate interactions over southern Africa simulated by a regional climate model

The Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) forced by ERA40 re-analyses, is used to examine, at regional scale, the role of key features of the local atmospheric circulation on the origin and development of Tropical Temperate Troughs (TTTs) representing a major contribution to South African rainfall during austral summer. A cluster analysis applied on 1971–2000 ERA40 and WRF simulated daily outgoing longwave radiation reveals for the November–February season three coherent regimes characteristic of TTTs over the region. Analyses of WRF simulated TTTs suggest that their occurrence is primarily linked with mid-latitude westerly waves and their phasing. Ensemble experiments designed for the case of austral summer 1996/1997 allow to examine the reproducibility of TTT events. The results obtained illustrate the importance of westerly waves phasing regarding the persistence of rain-producing continental TTT events. Moreover, oceanic surface conditions prevailing over the Agulhas current regions of the South West Indian Ocean (SWIO) are also found to influence TTT persistence for regional experiments with an oceanic mixed layer, warmer sea surface temperatures being associated with increased moisture advection from the SWIO where latent heat release is enhanced, favoring baroclinic instability and thus sustaining convection activity locally.     

Internal variability in a regional climate model over West Africa

Sensitivity studies with regional climate models are often performed on the basis of a few simulations for which the difference is analysed and the statistical significance is often taken for granted. In this study we present some simple measures of the confidence limits for these types of experiments by analysing the internal variability of a regional climate model run over West Africa. Two 1-year long simulations, differing only in their initial conditions, are compared. The difference between the two runs gives a measure of the internal variability of the model and an indication of which timescales are reliable for analysis. The results are analysed for a range of timescales and spatial scales, and quantitative measures of the confidence limits for regional model simulations are diagnosed for a selection of study areas for rainfall, low level temperature and wind. As the averaging period or spatial scale is increased, the signal due to internal variability gets smaller and confidence in the simulations increases. This occurs more rapidly for variations in precipitation, which appear essentially random, than for dynamical variables, which show some organisation on larger scales.     

Regional climate simulations over Vietnam using the WRF model

Time-irreversible symmetry is a fundamental property of nonlinear time series. Time-irreversible behaviors of mean temperature measured on 182 stations over China from 1960 to 2012 are analyzed by directed horizontal visibility graph (DHVG for short), and significance of results has been estimated by Monte Carlo simulations. It is found that dominated time irreversibility emerges in nearly all daily temperature anomaly variations over China. Further studies indicate that these time-irreversible behaviors result from asymmetric distributions of persistent daily temperature increments and decrements, and this kind of symmetry can be quantified by distributions of consecutive daily mean temperature increasing or decreasing steps. At the same time, the findings above have been confirmed by artificially generated time series with given value of multiscale asymmetry.     

A regional climate model simulation over West Africa: parameterization tests and analysis of land-surface fields

The West African Monsoon has been simulated with the regional climate model PROMES, coupled to the land-surface model ORCHIDEE and nested in ECMWF analysis, within AMMA-EU project. Three different runs are presented to address the influence of changes in two parameterizations (moist convection and radiation) on the simulated West African Monsoon. Another aim of the study is to get an insight into the relationship of simulated precipitation and 2-m temperature with land-surface fluxes. To this effect, data from the AMMA land-surface model intercomparison project (ALMIP) have been used. In ALMIP, offline simulations have been made using the same land-surface model than in the coupled simulation presented here, which makes ALMIP data particularly relevant for the present study, as it enables us to analyse the simulated soil and land-surface fields. The simulation of the monsoon depends clearly on the two analysed parameterizations. The inclusion of shallow convection parametrization affects the intensity of the simulated monsoon precipitation and modifies some dynamical aspects of the monsoon. The use of a fractional cloud-cover parameterization and a more complex radiation scheme is important for better reproducing the amplitude of the latitudinal displacement of the precipitation band. This is associated to an improved simulation of the surface temperature field and the easterly jets. However, the parameterization changes do not affect the timing of the main rainy and break periods of the monsoon. A better representation of downward solar radiation is associated with a smaller bias in the surface heat fluxes. The comparison with ALMIP land-surface and soil fields shows that precipitation and temperature biases in the regional climate model simulation are associated to certain biases in land-surface fluxes. The biases in soil moisture seem to be driven by atmospheric biases as they are strongly affected by the parameterization changes in atmospheric processes.     

Sensitivity of simulated temperature,precipitation, and global radiation to different WRF configurations over the Carpathian Basin for regional climate applications

In this study, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is used to produce short-term regional climate simulations with several configurations for the Carpathian Basin region. The goal is to evaluate the performance of the model and analyze its sensitivity to different physical and dynamical settings, and input data. Fifteen experiments were conducted with WRF at 10 km resolution for the year 2013. The simulations differ in terms of configuration options such as the parameterization schemes, the hydrostatic and non-hydrostatic dynamical cores, the initial and boundary conditions (ERA5 and ERA-Interim reanalyses), the number of vertical levels, and the length of the spin-up period. E-OBS dataset 2 m temperature, total precipitation, and global radiation are used for validation. Temperature underestimation reaches 4–7 °C for some experiments and can be reduced by certain physics scheme combinations. The cold bias in winter and spring is mainly caused by excessive snowfall and too persistent snow cover, as revealed by comparison with satellite-based observations and a test simulation without snow on the surface. Annual precipitation is overestimated by 0.6–3.8 mm day⁻¹, with biases mainly accumulating in the period driven by large-scale weather processes. Downward shortwave radiation is underestimated all year except in the months dominated by locally forced phenomena (May to August) when a positive bias prevails. The incorporation of downward shortwave radiation to the validation variables increased the understanding of underlying problems with the parameterization schemes and highlighted false model error compensations.

     

Testing WRF capability in simulating the atmospheric water cycle over Equatorial East Africa

Uncertainties in simulating the seasonal mean atmospheric water cycle in Equatorial East Africa are quantified using 58 one-year-long experiments performed with the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF). Tested parameters include physical parameterizations of atmospheric convection, cloud microphysics, planetary boundary layer, land-surface model and radiation schemes, as well as land-use categories (USGS vs. MODIS), lateral forcings (ERA-Interim and ERA40 reanalyses), and domain geometry (size and vertical resolution). Results show that (1) uncertainties, defined as the differences between the experiments, are larger than the biases; (2) the parameters exerting the largest influence on simulated rainfall are, in order of decreasing importance, the shortwave radiation scheme, the land-surface model, the domain size, followed by convective schemes and land-use categories; (3) cloud microphysics, lateral forcing reanalysis, the number of vertical levels and planetary boundary layer schemes appear to be of lesser importance at the seasonal scale. Though persisting biases (consisting of conditions that are too wet over the Indian Ocean and the Congo Basin and too dry over eastern Kenya) prevail in most experiments, several configurations simulate the regional climate with reasonable accuracy.     

Uncertainties in simulating regional climate of Southern Africa: sensitivity to physical parameterizations using WRF

This study aims at quantifying seasonal biases of regional climate model outputs during southern African summer, against a dense in situ measurement network (daily rain-gauge and surface air temperature records, and 12?h UTC radiosondes), and uncertainties associated with some physical parameterizations. Using the non-hydrostatic Advanced Research Weather Forecast (WRF) laterally forced by ERA40 reanalysis, twenty-seven experiments configured with three schemes of cumulus (CU), planetary boundary layer (PBL) and microphysics (MP), are performed at 35?km horizontal resolution during the core of a summer rainy season (December 1993 to February 1994 season) representative of the South African rainfall climatology. WRF simulates accurately seasonal large-scale rainfall patterns, as well as seasonal gradients of South African rainfall and 2-m temperature, and seasonal vertical profiles of the air temperature and humidity. However seasonal biases fluctuate strongly from an experiment to another, denoting considerable uncertainties generated by the physical package. Rainfall amounts are the most sensitive parameter to the tested schemes. Their geography, intensity, and intraseasonal characteristics are predominantly sensitive to CU schemes, and much less to PBL and MP schemes. Some CU-PBL combinations produce additive effects, which can dramatically either reduce or increase biases. Satisfactory configurations are found for South African climate, which would not have been possible without testing numerous physical parameterizations.     

Examining climate variability over West Africa during the 1979–1993 period: observations and CCM3 comparisons

The Community Climate Model Version 3.6 is used to simulate the mean climate of West Africa during the Northern Hemisphere summer season (June-August). The climate model uses prescribed climatological sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and observed SSTs during the 1979-1993 period. Two important circulation features, the African Easterly Jet (AEJ) and the Tropical Easterly Jet (TEJ), are found in the simulations but a westerly wind bias is found with respect to 700 hPa winds. Consequently, easterly waves and rain rates are poorly simulated. The primary cause of the poorly simulated AEJ is the advection of cold air from Europe producing a cold bias over northern Africa and a weaker than observed meridional temperature gradient. The cold bias is caused by an eastward displacement of the simulated Azores surface high into Western Europe creating a stronger than observed meridional sea level pressure gradient over northern Africa. This bias systematically occurs in simulations using both climatological and observed SSTs. The biases in sea level pressure, temperature and zonal winds have the potential to produce poor regional climate model results for West Africa if the meteorological output from the CCM3 is used as lateral boundaries. Moreover, these biases introduce uncertainties to West African GCM sensitivity studies associated with interannual variability, land-use change and elevated anthropogenic greenhouse gases.     

Fully coupled climate/dynamical vegetation model simulations over Northern Africa during the mid-Holocene

 The climate and vegetation patterns of the middle Holocene (6000 years ago; 6 ka) over Northern Africa are simulated using a fully-synchronous climate and dynamical vegetation model. The coupled model predicts a northward shift in tropical rainforest and tropical deciduous forest vegetation by about 5 degrees of latitude, and an increase in grassland at the present-day simulated Saharan boundaries. The northward expansion of vegetation over North Africa at 6 ka is initiated by an orbitally-induced amplification of the summer monsoon, and enhanced by feedback effects induced by the vegetation. These combined processes lead to a major reduction in Saharan desert area at 6 ka relative to present-day of about 50%. However, as shown in previous asynchronous modelling studies, the coupled climate/vegetation model does not fully reproduce the vegetation patterns inferred from palaeoenvironmental records, which suggest that steppe vegetation may have existed across most of Northern Africa. Orbital changes produce an intensification of monsoonal precipitation during the peak rainy season (July to September), whilst vegetation feedbacks, in addition to producing further increases in the peak intensity, play an important role in extending the rainy season from May/June through to November. The orbitally induced increases in precipitation are relatively uniform from west to east, in contrast to vegetation feedback-induced increases in precipitation which are concentrated in western North Africa. Annual-average precipitation increases caused by vegetation feedbacks are simulated to be of similar importance to orbital effects in the west, whilst they are relatively unimportant farther to the east. The orbital, vegetation and combined orbital and vegetation-induced changes in climate, from the simulations presented in this study, have been compared with results from previous modelling studies over the appropriate North African domain. Consequently, the important role of vegetation parametrizations in determining the magnitude of vegetation feedbacks has been illustrated. Further modelling studies which include the effects of changes in ocean temperature and changes in soil properties may be needed, along with additional observations, to resolve the discrepancy between model predictions of vegetation and palaeorecords for North Africa. Received: 15 June 1999 / Accepted: 14 December 1999     

Uncertainties in modelling future hydrological change over West Africa

The aim of this paper is to evaluate current knowledge and uncertainties associated with the impact of increasing greenhouse gas and aerosol concentrations on the West African monsoon. For this purpose, coupled and time-slice simulations are used. A global measure of the monsoon changes is defined in order to avoid regional biases and to try and obtain significant results. The position and width of the monsoon in latitude are the main focuses. There is almost no agreement between the Coupled General Circulation models from the Coupled models Inter-Comparison project—Phase II in regard to the impact of climate change on the monsoon. Moreover, very simple discriminations between the models seem inappropriate to get a better signal. The role of the different forcings in time-slice simulations is then investigated. The sea surface temperature (SST) and particularly the pattern of the SST are shown to be the most important forcing. This accounts for the diversity of the results either from the coupled or the forced simulations with different SST changes. With a fixed SST, but of a smaller magnitude in AMJ, there are still uncertainties, coming first from the Atmospheric General Circulation models and the way they balance greenhouse gas and global SST increase. Finally the uncertainty due to the Land Surface models (LSMs) is not negligible. The greenhouse gas and the LSMs are shown to have more impact in August, when the monsoon is at its highest latitude on the continent.     

Present climate and climate change over North America as simulated by the fifth-generation Canadian regional climate model

The fifth-generation Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM5) was used to dynamically downscale two Coupled Global Climate Model (CGCM) simulations of the transient climate change for the period 1950–2100, over North America, following the CORDEX protocol. The CRCM5 was driven by data from the CanESM2 and MPI-ESM-LR CGCM simulations, based on the historical (1850–2005) and future (2006–2100) RCP4.5 radiative forcing scenario. The results show that the CRCM5 simulations reproduce relatively well the current-climate North American regional climatic features, such as the temperature and precipitation multiannual means, annual cycles and temporal variability at daily scale. A cold bias was noted during the winter season over western and southern portions of the continent. CRCM5-simulated precipitation accumulations at daily temporal scale are much more realistic when compared with its driving CGCM simulations, especially in summer when small-scale driven convective precipitation has a large contribution over land. The CRCM5 climate projections imply a general warming over the continent in the 21st century, especially over the northern regions in winter. The winter warming is mostly contributed by the lower percentiles of daily temperatures, implying a reduction in the frequency and intensity of cold waves. A precipitation decrease is projected over Central America and an increase over the rest of the continent. For the average precipitation change in summer however there is little consensus between the simulations. Some of these differences can be attributed to the uncertainties in CGCM-projected changes in the position and strength of the Pacific Ocean subtropical high pressure.     

Modeling the impacts of reforestation on future climate in West Africa

This study investigates the potential impacts of reforestation in West Africa on the projected regional climate in the near two decades (2031–2050) under the SRES A1B scenario. A regional climate model (RegCM3) forced with a global circulation model (ECHAM5) simulations was used for the study. The study evaluates the capability of the regional model in simulating the present-day climate over West Africa, projects the future climate over the region and investigates impacts of seven hypothetical reforestation options on the projected future climate. Three of these reforestation options assume zonal reforestation over West Africa (i.e., over the Sahel, Savanna and Guinea), while the other four assume random reforestation over Nigeria. With the elevated GHGs (A1B scenario), a warmer and drier climate is projected over West Africa in 2031–2050. The maximum warming (+2.5°C) and drying (?2?mm?day^?1) occur in the western part of the Sahel because the West Africa Monsoon (WAM) flow is stronger and deflects the cool moist air more eastward, thereby lowering the warming and drying in the eastern part. In the simulations, reforestation reduces the projected warming and drying over the reforested zones but increases them outside the zones because it influences the northward progression of WAM in summer. It reduces the speed of the flow by weakening the temperature gradient that drives the flow and by increasing the surface drag on the flow over the reforested zone. Hence, in summer, the reforestation delays the onset of monsoon flow in transporting cool moist air over the area located downwind of the reforested zone, consequently enhancing the projected warming and drying over the area. The impact of reforesting Nigeria is not limited to the country; while it lowers the warming over part of the country (and over Togo), it increases the warming over Chad and Cameroon. This study, therefore, suggests that using reforestation to mitigate the projected future climate change in West Africa could have both positive and negative impacts on the regional climate, reducing temperature in some places and increasing it in others. Hence, reforestation in West Africa requires a mutual agreement among the West African nations because the impacts of reforestation do not recognize political boundaries.     

Evaluation of High-Resolution WRF Model Simulations of Surface Wind over the West Coast of India

This paper presents results from a statistical validation of the hindcasts of surface wind by a high-reso-ution-mesoscale atmospheric numerical model Advanced Research WRF （ARW3.3）, which is set up to force the operational coastal ocean forecast system at Indian Na- tional Centre for Ocean Information Services （INCOIS）. Evaluation is carried out based on comparisons of day-3 forecasts of surface wind with in situ and remote-sensing data. The results show that the model predicts the surface wind fields fairly accurately over the west coast of India, with high skill in predicting the surface wind during the pre-monsoon season. The model predicts the diurnal variability of the surface wind with reasonable accuracy. The model simulates the land-sea breeze cycle in the coastal region realistically, which is very clearly observed during the northeast monsoon and pre-monsoon season and is less prominent during the southwest monsoon season.     

Variability and trends of local/regional scale surface climate in northern Africa during the twentieth century

Four regions are detected in northern Africa (20° W–40° E, 0–30° N) by applying the cluster analysis method on the annual rainfall anomalies of the period 1901–2000. The first region (R1), an arid land, covers essentially the north of 17.75° N from west to east of the study zone. The second region (R2), a semiarid land with a Sahelian climate, less warm than the dry climate of R1, is centred on Chad, with almost regular extension to the west towards Mauritania, and to the east, including the north of the Central African Republic and the Sudan. The region 3 (R3), a wet land, is centred on the Ivory Coast and covers totally Liberia, the south part of Ghana, Togo, Benin and the southwest of Nigeria. The fourth region (R4), corresponding to the wet equatorial forest, covers a part of Senegal, the Central Africa, the south of Sudan and a part of Ethiopia. An analysis of observed temperature and precipitation variability and trends throughout the twentieth century over these regions is presented. Summer, winter and annual data are examined using a range of variability measures. Statistically, significant warming trends are found over the majority of regions. The trends have a magnitude of up to 1.5 K per century. Only a few precipitation trends are statistically significant. Regional temperature and precipitation show pronounced variability at scales from interannual to multi-decadal. The interannual variability shows significant variations and trends throughout the century, the latter being mostly negative for precipitation and both positive and negative for temperature. Temperature and precipitation anomalies show a chaotic-type behaviour in which the regional conditions oscillate around the long-term mean trend and occasionally fall into long-lasting (up to 10 years or more) anomaly regimes. A generally modest temporal correlation is found between anomalies of different regions and between temperature and precipitation anomalies for the same region. This correlation is mostly positive for temperature in cases of adjacent regions. Several cases of negative interregional precipitation anomaly correlation are found. The El Niño Southern Oscillation significantly affects the anomaly variability patterns over a number of regions, mainly regions 3 (R3) and 4 (R4), while the North Atlantic Oscillation significantly affects the variability over arid and semiarid regions, R1 and R2.     

Current trends of climate changes in southern arid regions of West Siberia

The regional climate changes in the arid regions in the south of West Siberia for the period of 1936–2010 are estimated by means of the statistical analysis of the series of climatic parameters and complex hydrothermal indices. Revealed is the close correlation between the above characteristics. The periodicity of variations of some climatic parameters and corresponding indices amounting to 8–12 years on average is revealed using the Welch’s method of spectral analysis.