TY - JOUR
T1 - Hydrological projections under climate change in the near future by RegCM4 in Southern Africa using a large-scale hydrological model
AU - Li, Lu
AU - Diallo, Ismaïla
AU - Xu, Chong Yu
AU - Stordal, Frode
N1 - Funding Information:
Furthermore, changes in climate as simulated by RCMs may likely be influenced by the driving climates of coarse resolution GCMs ( Xu, 1999; Arnell et al., 2003; Mariotti et al., 2014 ). This paper presents the main results of WP2 in ‘Socioeconomic Consequences of Climate Change in Sub-equatorial Africa (SoCoCA)’ project, which is funded by the Research Council of Norway (RCN) Environment and Development Programme (FRIMUF). In this project, the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Atmospheric Model version 4 (CAM4; Gent et al., 2011 ) is used for global climate modelling. CCSM, from which other boundary conditions were used in this case, is a fully coupled global climate model that provides state-of-the-art simulations for past, present, and future climate states ( http://www.ccsm.ucar.edu/ ). For several years the atmospheric part of the CCSM has been used for aerosol–cloud interaction studies by the SoCoCA participants ( Kristjánsson et al., 2005; Storelvmo et al., 2006; Myhre et al., 2007 ). It allows us to use a relatively high atmospheric resolution in CAM4, which leads to improved simulation of large-scale climate patterns over Africa. RegCM4 ( Giorgi et al., 2012 ) is the latest version of ICTP regional climate model. It has been used for a wide range of applications, from process studies, to paleoclimate and climate change simulations ( Giorgi and Mearns, 1999; Giorgi et al., 2004 ). Especially, RegCM4 includes the capability of simulating climatic effects of desert dust, sulphates and carbonaceous aerosols ( Solmon et al., 2006; Zakey et al., 2006 ), as well as ozone ( Shalaby et al., 2012 ).
Funding Information:
This study was funded by the Research Council of Norway (RCN) project 190159/V10 (SoCoCA) and project 216576 (NORINDIA). Finally, we would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers who gave valuable comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier B.V..
PY - 2015/9/1
Y1 - 2015/9/1
N2 - This study aims to provide model estimates of changes in hydrological elements, such as EvapoTranspiration (ET) and runoff, in Southern Africa in the near future until 2029. The climate change scenarios are projected by a high-resolution Regional Climate Model (RCM), RegCM4, which is the latest version of this model developed by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). The hydrological projections are performed by using a large-scale hydrological model (WASMOD-D), which has been tested and customized on this region prior to this study. The results reveal that (1) the projected temperature shows an increasing tendency over Southern Africa in the near future, especially eastward of 25°E, while the precipitation changes are varying between different months and sub-regions; (2) an increase in runoff (and ET) was found in eastern part of Southern Africa, i.e. Southern Mozambique and Malawi, while a decrease was estimated across the driest region in a wide area encompassing Kalahari Desert, Namibia, southwest of South Africa and Angola; (3) the strongest climate change signals are found over humid tropical areas, i.e. north of Angola and Malawi and south of Dem Rep of Congo; and (4) large spatial and temporal variability of climate change signals is found in the near future over Southern Africa. This study presents the main results of work-package 2 (WP2) of the 'Socioeconomic Consequences of Climate Change in Sub-equatorial Africa (SoCoCA)' project, which is funded by the Research Council of Norway.
AB - This study aims to provide model estimates of changes in hydrological elements, such as EvapoTranspiration (ET) and runoff, in Southern Africa in the near future until 2029. The climate change scenarios are projected by a high-resolution Regional Climate Model (RCM), RegCM4, which is the latest version of this model developed by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). The hydrological projections are performed by using a large-scale hydrological model (WASMOD-D), which has been tested and customized on this region prior to this study. The results reveal that (1) the projected temperature shows an increasing tendency over Southern Africa in the near future, especially eastward of 25°E, while the precipitation changes are varying between different months and sub-regions; (2) an increase in runoff (and ET) was found in eastern part of Southern Africa, i.e. Southern Mozambique and Malawi, while a decrease was estimated across the driest region in a wide area encompassing Kalahari Desert, Namibia, southwest of South Africa and Angola; (3) the strongest climate change signals are found over humid tropical areas, i.e. north of Angola and Malawi and south of Dem Rep of Congo; and (4) large spatial and temporal variability of climate change signals is found in the near future over Southern Africa. This study presents the main results of work-package 2 (WP2) of the 'Socioeconomic Consequences of Climate Change in Sub-equatorial Africa (SoCoCA)' project, which is funded by the Research Council of Norway.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2015.05.028
DO - 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2015.05.028
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84930942320
SN - 0022-1694
VL - 528
SP - 1
EP - 16
JO - Journal of Hydrology
JF - Journal of Hydrology
ER -
