Domain activities 2020

Workshops and other activities

The CORDEX Central America and South America Online Paper-Writing Workshop on Regional Climate Modeling was held during November 24-25 and December 8-9, 2020 with the overall goal of promoting collaborative activities and networking in the SAM/CAM regions with focus on specific regional climate phenomena. In this context, a virtual workshop on paper-writing was carried out with the aim of enhancing the capacity of PhD students and early career researchers in designing a research topic on regional climate modeling and documenting/writing the scientific results based on CORDEX simulations.

IPCC Several colleagues of CORDEX SAM have participated as Lead Authors, Contributing Authors and Reviewers of the WGI and Atlas of the IPCC AR6 contributing with their expertise in regional climate assessments.

For new publications please go to Peer reviewed publications 2020

Workshops and other activities

This year we reduced the number of events due to the COVID-19 pandemia, only a couple of them were organized as online meetings. We supported many requests of CORDEX-CAM data from students and scientists of various countries (Mexico, Guatemala, Italy, Portugal, and the United States)

We participated ONLINE in a special session at the Annual Meeting of the Mexican Geophysical Union (RAUGM 2020) on 3 November 2020. We have been organizing this session since 2014:

SE13: Regional Climate Modelling and CORDEX / Modelación climática regional y CORDEX. Organized by Tereza Cavazos (CICESE), Gabriela Colorado-Ruiz (CICESE), Rosa B. Luna-Nino (CICESE), and José Abraham Torres-Alavez (ICTP).

In November and December we organized an online paper-writing workshop that was supposed to be in Sao Paulo. At the end, we did it online in two parts (November 24-25 & December 8-9, 2020) and it worked pretty well with 45 young students and scientists from different countries. The objectives were to foster the collaboration, capacity building, and the possible submission of several papers on CORDEX-CAM-SAM data next year. There will be a report of this event to CORDEX:

CORDEX Central America and South America Online Paper-Writing Workshop on Regional Climate Modeling. Organized by Maria Laura Bettolli and Silvina Solman (Universidad de Buenos Aires), Rosmeri Porfirio da Rocha (University of Sao Paulo), Tereza Cavazos (CICESE, Mexico), and Irene Lake ans Lindha Nilsson (CORDEX-IPOC, Sweden).

For new publications please go to Peer reviewed publications 2020

Scientific highlights

Climate projection provision:
1. NA-CORDEX data provision: NA-CORDEX data from a set of RCM simulations by WRF, RegCM, CRCM5, CanRCM4, RCA4, and HIRHAM5, at three grid spacings (50 km, 25 km and 12.5 km) and driven by ERA-Interim and the GFDL, MPI, HadGEM, CanESM2, ECEarth CMIP5 simulations (under RCP8.5) continues to be available from: https://na-cordex.org/ and has generated a range of publications some of which are listed below.
2. PCIC at the University of Victoria continues to offer statistically downscaled daily Canada-wide projections of a range of variables from https://www.pacificclimate.org/data/statistically-downscaled-climate-scenarios. These datasets are also the basis of the Climate Atlas of Canada available at; https://climateatlas.ca/data-sources-and-methods
3. The NA-CORDEX dataset (as with other CORDEX datasets) is being featured in the Interactive Atlas of the IPCC Working Group I Report.
Advancement of new methods for downscaling credibility assessments (DCA). Providing robust guidance regarding fidelity (or credibility) of climate projections is a key thrust within the NA domain. For example a framework to quantify and depict the credibility of statistically downscaled model output is presented and demonstrated in Pryor and Schoof (2020). Further methodological development for DCA, particularly the differential credibility of both statistical and dynamical downscaling, is ongoing.
Innovative use of downscaling ensembles and other climate data. The HyperFACETS project (supported by DoE, https://climate.ucdavis.edu/hyperfacets/index.php) is advancing methods to use storylines both for stakeholder engagement and to enable use of pseudo-global warming experiments.
Articulation of new frontiers in regional modeling (e.g. Gutowski et al. 2020) and deployment of RCM at convection permitting resolutions. A major focus of NA-CORDEX initiatives is around the need-for, optimal use of, and optimal configurations for convection permitting simulations. Examples of such work include; Letson et al. (2020) and Li et al. (2020).
Deployment of variable resolution ESMs with high resolution nesting over specific regions. Examples of such work is reported in Feng et al. (2020) and Pryor et al. (2020).
There is increased interest in use of artificial intelligence for parameterization development and process investigation. A series of workshops was hosted by DoE Office of Science on Scientific Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

For new publications please go to Peer reviewed publications 2020

Scientific highlights

Finalization of the Euro-CORDEX guidelines on regional climate simulations

Publication of a joint Euro-CORDEX publication Jacob et al, 2020

Preparation of the Euro-CORDEX Ensemble Matrix Design white paper

FPS –Convective phenomena at high resolution over Europe and the Mediterranean:

Finalization of evaluation simulations (30 ensemble members) and publishing datasets in FZJ server
Ongoing historical/projection simulations
Publications in peer review journals (Lavin Guillon et al., 2020; Coppola et al., 2020)
Multiple manuscripts in-review or in-prep (Pitchelli et al. and Ban et al. nearing acceptance)

FPS- LUCAS (Land Use and Climate Across Scales):

Two publications in peer review journals (Davin et al., 2020; Breil et al 2020)
10 RCMs have finalized the coordinated experiments on extreme land use change scenarios, and there are many ongoing multi-model studies based on those experiments, and publishing datasets on FZJ/JSC server
Preparation of datasets on LULC change
Preparation of high-resolution historical/projection simulations with land use changes

Workshops and other activities

FPS-Convection: Annual meeting 1-2/12 2020 online

FPS-LUCAS: PFT Workshop 30/10 2020 online

FPS-LUCAS: Annual meeting 17-18/9 2020

FPS-LUCAS Interim Meeting 2020, 18/6 2020

For new publications please go to Peer reviewed publications 2020
or for EURO-CORDEX 2020 publication list

Scientific highlights

Academic publications

Lack of funding and the impact of COVID19 meant it was not possible to run the anticipated workshops planned for 2020. However, at least eight papers were produced during 2020 by CORDEX-Africa participants. There is continued collaboration between the climate science and VIA groups.

Rotating SAT member

Dr Chris Lennard has completed his term on the SAT and Wilfried Pokam has been selected to replace him. Chris will assume the position as a POC for the region.

FPS

Two Africa-led FPSs have been received and on review both have been returned to the proposers to address review comments. If review comments are accounted for the FPSs will be accepted. These are “Simulating role of aerosols on the past climate change attribution and future projection in West Africa” and “Rainfall responses to climate change in a convective-permitting model over Western Cape (HighResWC)”. Work in existing FPSs is ongoing with good progress. The FPS titled “Coupled regional modelling of land-atmosphere-ocean interactions over western-southern Africa under climate change“ has not sustained funding to run to completion and has stalled because of this. Further efforts will be made to source funding in 2020 that would facilitate completion of the FPS. In the ELVIS FPS CORDEX-Africa affiliates are involved in the analysis of the simulations being performed over the region.

IPCC

Several CORDEX-Africa affiliates are involved as Lead Authors and Contributing Authors in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). Lead Authors are involved in WG1 Chapters 8, 10, 11, 12 and the Atlas and also in WG2 Chapter 9 (Africa).

CORDEX-CORE data

Data from the CORDEX-Core simulations have been downloaded at CSAG and can be distributed on request (and receipt of external hard drives) to CORDEX-Africa participants as well as other interested persons.

For new publications please go to Peer reviewed publications 2020

Scientific highlights

A new open access book on Assessment of Climate Change over the Indian Region has been published in June 2020. This is the first climate change report for the Indian region from the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India, discusses the influence of human-induced global climate change over the Indian subcontinent and the regional monsoon, the adjoining Indian Ocean and the Himalayas. It also briefly discusses policy relevant information based on robust scientific analysis and assessments of the observed and future projected climate change over the Indian region. The assessments presented in this book are based on peer-reviewed scientific publications, published IPCC reports, analyses of long-term observed climate records, paleoclimate reconstructions, reanalysis datasets and climate model projections from the WCRP through their CMIP and the CORDEX South Asia scientific projects. https://cordex.org/2020/07/03/new-book-on-assessment-of-climate-change-over-the-indian-region/

CCCR-IITM is a modeling partner in the five year (2020-2024) International CORDEX Flagship Pilot Study (FPS) project entitled: High resolution climate modeling with a focus on mesoscale convective systems and associated precipitation over the Third Pole (TP) region. This FPS aims to better understand the regional characteristics of water cycle and its variabilities and changes over the TP and adjoining regions using a set of coordinated high resolution regional climate downscaling experiments carried out by international participants with a focus on convection-permitting simulations (2-5 km) using different models or model setups. Read more: http://rcg.gvc.gu.se/cordex_fps_cptp/

Evaluated CMIP5 GCMs performance over Sundarbans region (19th administrative blocks) of India.

Constructed fresh water availability scenarios for agricultural Planning of Sundarbans region of India with joint collaboration of India-UK international Pump Priming Project (PPP).

A review paper has been published on “Drivers of climate over the Western Himalayan region of India: A review”, Earth Science Reviews.

Some studies have been performed to see what improvement of downscaling work is over few location of India particularly over Himalayan and Sundarbans regions of India.

Workshops and other activities

The CORDEX-MAIRS-FE meeting was held online 9-10 November 2020. This was a step towards elaborating on further cooperation between CORDEX, MAIRS-FE, and other relevant actors in the South/East/Central Asia regions, The aim was to outline an extended and more established collaboration scheme and included a discussion on topics of special urgency/interest for the regions. The idea was to find a framework for how to set up a network and cooperate. Representatives from both APN and ANSO were attending the workshop as well as many other important stakeholders from the Asian region. Read more: https://cordex.org/2020/11/27/collaboration-between-cordex-and-mairs-fe-2/

Regional climate change projections: Climate change analysis using CORDEX regional climate models over South Asia
A first in the series of training activities planned as part of the Asia Regional Resilience to a Changing Climate (ARRCC) programme, funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) was held online during six days in October 2020. This training jointly developed and delivered by ICIMOD and the UK Met Office, with support from WCRP, SMHI, and CCCR-IITM, aimed to enhance the institutional capacity of national climate service institutions in focal ARRCC countries and strengthen their capacity to build underpinning knowledge and skills for analysing regional climate change projections using CORDEX South Asia regional climate model simulations. This training covered an introduction to climate change science, modelling, and downscaling, followed by an introduction to accessing and using the CORDEX datasets, including introductions to tools for analysing and visualizing climate change projections at different time scales. Read more: https://www.icimod.org/event/regional-climate-change-projections-cordex/

For new publications please go to Peer reviewed publications 2020

Workshops and other activities

A webinar on climate change adaptation in fisheries and aquaculture was organized on 23–24 June under the project “Capacity Building for Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture Management in Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Turkey (FISHCap) (GCP/SEC/013/TUR)” implemented under the FAO-Turkey Partnership Programme on Food and Agriculture (FTPP II). http://www.fao.org/turkey/events/event-detail/en/c/1293987/

For new publications please go to Peer reviewed publications 2020

Scientific highlights

First evaluation of the CORDEX-Australasia ensemble and assessment of the future projected changes. (Evans et al., 2020)

Evaluation of the added value in the CORDEX-Australasia ensemble and development of new index “Realised Added Value (RAV)” to quantify this (Di Virgilio et al., 2020)

Other news from CCAM group:

Over the past 9 months UQ have used 2020 version of CCAM with 35 vertical levels and C288 (~36km global) stretched to ~10 km over whole of Australia and completed 9 experiments with RCP85 for Access1.3 x 2, Access1-0 x 1, CanESm2 x 2, CESM-CAM5, MPI-EMS-LR x 1 and NorESM1-M x 1 for 1970-2099 period. Datat was saved every 3 hrs interval. x2 means experiment was run in both atmospheric only and coupled ocean CCAM model.

Data for rnd24, tmean, tmin and tmax were extracted from raw model output at 5km AWAP grid and was bias corrected using non-parametric BC method. Subsequently heatwaves, extreme precipitation and rainfall indices, SPI drought were derived from above simulations at 5 km over Australia. At 10 km FFDI, Haines index, mean climate and TC detection were completed.

Preparation for CMIP6 are progressing, UQ have converted matlab scripts to python for SST/sea ice BC and testing trying to have consistent SST/sea ice fields. Downloaded all available SSTs and sea ice from all SSPs for CMIP6 and will product SST/sea ice for CCAM. Hope to run CMIP6 soon. Marcus Thatcher (CSIRO) has provided ERA5 data for CCAM run plan to run CMIP6 version of CCAM with ERA5.

TERN has published two datasets.

1) Historical Heatwaves in Australia - https://portal.tern.org.au/historical-heatwaves-australia/21807

2) Queensland Future Climate Data - https://dap.tern.org.au/thredds/catalog/CMIP5QLD/catalog.html

Workshops and other activities

Regional climate projections and applications. Jan 2020.

Conference session on regional climate projections including CORDEX at the Australian Meteorology and Oceanography conference held in Fremantle Australia. http://amos-2020.w.amos.currinda.com/

For new publications please go to: Peer reviewed publications 2020

Scientific highlights

We had four science presentation in the Antarctic CORDEX session of the Polar CORDEX workshop, which focused on new modelling efforts, improved understanding of clouds, and efforts to model surface mass balance. One of the highlights was details of a new model to Antarctic CORDEX, the polar region climate model NHM-SMAP (Japan Meteorological Agency).

The ‘Polar CORDEX: Next Steps’ session had four presentations, as well as a period for discussion. One of the science highlights of this was two presentations on how the Polar CORDEX simulations will be used for the IPCC Interactive Atlas. Additionally, the period for discussion was valuable as it identified key ways that the Polar CORDEX could collaborate in the future, especially involving both the MOSAiC and the YOPP supersite observations. Furthermore, the benefit of a closer link to the satellite community e.g. via the ESA Climate Change Initiative (CCI) was discussed. A further important outcome was an agreement to increase the size of the Antarctic CORDEX domain to encompass more of the Southern Ocean, so that output from the model simulations could be used more for impact studies (e.g. forcing sea-ice and ocean models).

Workshops and other activities

Polar CORDEX Workshop, 5-7 October 2020
This is the annual joint Arctic and Antarctic CORDEX workshop. This workshop allows polar regional modelers to provide updates on their activities over the past year and to plan coordinated polar CORDEX activities for the upcoming year. The workshop was held as an online Zoom meeting this year due to COVID.
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1pa22xJ3t-0HPSMc0AkObT4YdOb4NzwG8

For new publications please go to: Peer reviewed publications 2020

At the Polar CORDEX workshop in October we had seven science presentation in the Arctic CORDEX session, which focused on new modelling efforts, key drivers of Arctic cyclones, simulations of future climate change, and teleconnections. One of the highlights was an improvement in simulation of temperature at the snow/ice surface in the CCLM model.

Workshops and other activities

For new publications please go to: Peer reviewed publications 2020

Scientific highlights

Med-CORDEX phase 2 simulations
-The Med-CORDEX phase 2 is now running (see the summary of the phase 2 organisation here
www.medcordex.eu/simulations-phase2.php )
-Baseline runs: 10 modelling groups have achieved the preparation of their fully-coupled Regional
Climate System Models (RCSM) and are currently running it. They come from France (LMD, IPSL,
CNRM), Italy (ICTP, CMCC, ENEA), Germany (GUF), Spain (AWI-GERICS), Serbia (UBELGRADE) and
Turkey (ITU). 6 evaluation runs have been performed for this phase 2 as well as 7 scenario runs.
-FPS-convection (https://www.hymex.org/cordexfps-convection/wiki/doku.php): 30 modelling groups
are now participating to the initiative using 6 different RCMs at kilometer scales. 17 evaluation runs
are completed over the alpin domain (at least 10-year time slices) as well as 21 scenario runs (end of
the 21st century, RCP8.5, 10-year time slices).
-FPS-aerosol (https://www.hymex.org/cordexfps-aerosol/wiki/doku.php?id=start) : simulations have
been performed for the 5 defined protocols, in particular 8 sensitivity runs are available for protocol 1B
(futur scenario runs with/without evolving aerosol in the future) and 3 runs for protocol 2C (future
scenario runs with interactive aerosols).
-FPS-airsea: Sensitivity tests to the sea representation and air-sea coupling representation have been
run in evaluation mode and scenario mode in particular concerning the effect of the tidal mixing
representation.
-Free Modelling Zone runs: no new activity in 2020 (see the list on www.medcordex.eu/list-activities_Med-CORDEXFMZ.
pdf)

Med-CORDEX dissemination
- The valorisation and dissemination of the phase 1 simulations is still on-going.
- Up to now, the Med-CORDEX database (phase 1 simulations) includes 113 datasets, provided by 15
institutes, 7.4 To uploaded, 38 To downloaded by 281 users (find more information here
https://www.medcordex.eu/medcordex.php)
- The assessment reports MedECC-MAR1 (published in December 2020) and IPCC-AR6 WG1 (to be
published in 2021) have used publications based on Med-CORDEX simulations. Med-CORDEX-based
literature was used for the assessement of various scientific topics such as Marine heatwaves,
Mediterranean Heavy Precipitation Events, Sea level, Medicanes, Regional wind system, Ocean deep
convection, climate change impact of water ressources and marine ecosystems, ...
- The COPERNICUS Climate Data Store is currently ingesting Med-CORDEX phase 1 simulations to provide
them in a user-friendly format to the numerous C3S users
- The Med-CORDEX sea surface temperature projections for the Mediterranean Sea (9 RCSMs, 16
projection runs, 3 RCP scenarios, 6 driving GCMs) have been provided to the IPCC Interactive Atlas
developed in the framework of the IPCC-AR6. To our knowledge, this will be the only high-resolution
ocean projection dataset provided in this reference IPCC portal aside the low-resolution GCM dataset.
- In 2020, 10 scientific articles have been published using Med-CORDEX simulations (list available on
www.medcordex.eu/publications.php and https://www.hymex.org/cordexfps-aerosol/wiki/doku.php?
id=publications). This includes in particular multi-model studies on the climate-aerosol interactions,
future evolution of the Mediterranean Sea, future evolution of the extreme precipitations and drying
conditions
- The first Med-CORDEX dataset has been published on the ESGF in 2020 and the standard format for
river and ocean variables publications have been set. This opens the door to the publication of the
Med-CORDEX phase 2 simulations on the ESGF whatever the components (atmosphere, surface, ocean,
river, aerosol, marine biogeochemistry, wave)

Med-CORDEX organization
- The Med-CORDEX Steering Committee includes 6 members from Italy, Germany, France and Spain. It
has been very active this year to promote and organize the dissemination of the Med-CORDEX phase 1
simulations and to lead the Med-CORDEX-related FPS activities
- The annual FPS-convection meeting was held remotely in December 2020 (2-day meeting). The
meetings of the other FPS were cancelled.
- The FPS-convection has created a lively chat using Slack facility to increase the participant interactions.
- Various scientific visits between partners have been postponed due to the covid crisis.

Workshops and other activities

FPS-convection annual meeting

For new publications please go to

www.medcordex.eu/publications.php

https://www.hymex.org/cordexfps-aerosol/wiki/
doku.php?id=publications

Peer reviewed publications 2020

First common publication effort from the MENA-CORDEX:
Zittis G., Hadjinicolaou P., Almazroui M., Bucchignani E., Driouech F., El Rhaz K., Kurnaz L., Nikulin G., Ntoumos A., Ozturk T., Proestos Y., Zaaboul R., Lelieveld J. (2020) Business-as-usual will lead to ultra-extreme heatwaves in the Middle East and North Africa. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science (under eview: NPJCLIMATSCI-00486)

Website updated: http://mena-cordex.cyi.ac.cy/

For new publications please go to Peer reviewed publications 2020

Scientific highlights

Under SEACLID/CORDEX Southeast Asia, Tangang et al. (2020) reported 11 GCMs have been downscaled using 7 RCMs at 25 km. A regional data portal called the Southeast Asia Regional Climate Change Information System (SARCCIS) has also been established as an ESGF data node. Generally, the projection calling for increase rainfall over Indo-China during DJF but decrease rainfall in Maritime Continent during JJA. Large biases and inter-model variations tended to be over archipelago regions as 25 km may not be sufficient. On-going simulations focused on further downscaling of a number of subdomains at 5 km resolution.

Another initiative under CORDEX-CORE managed downscale 3 GCMs using 2 RCMs at 25 km resolution.

Workshops and other activities

The CORDEX Southeast Asia Outreach and Capacity Building Workshop Via Online 17 - 19 November 2020, http://www.rucore.ru.ac.th/cordex_outreach

For new publications please go to Peer reviewed publications 2020