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Change in Extreme Climate Events over China Based on CMIP5 |
XU Ying1,WU Jie1,2,SHI Ying1,ZHOU Bo-Tao1, LI Rou-Ke1, WU Jia1 |
1National Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing 100081, China
2Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing 100081, China |
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Abstract The changes in a selection of extreme climate indices (maximum of daily maximum temperature (TXx), minimum of daily minimum temperature (TNn), annual total precipitation when the daily precipitation exceeds the 95th percentile of wet-day precipitation (very wet days, R95p), and the maximum number of consecutive days with less than 1 mm of precipitation (consecutive dry days, CDD)) were projected using multi-model results from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project in the early, middle, and latter parts of the 21st century under different Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) emissions scenarios. The results suggest that TXx and TNn will increase in the future and, moreover, the increases of TNn under all RCPs are larger than those of TXx. R95p is projected to increase and CDD to decrease significantly. The changes in TXx, TNn, R95p, and CDD in eight sub-regions of China are different in the three periods of the 21st century, and the ranges of change for the four indices under the higher emissions scenario are projected to be larger than those under the lower emissions scenario. The multi-model simulations show remarkable consistency in their projection of the extreme temperature indices, but poor consistency with respect to the extreme precipitation indices. More substantial inconsistency is found in those regions where high and low temperatures are likely to happen for TXx and TNn, respectively. For extreme precipitation events (R95p), greater uncertainty appears in most of the southern regions, while for drought events (CDD) it appears in the basins of Xinjiang. The uncertainty in the future changes of the extreme climate indices increases with the increasing severity of the emissions scenario.
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Received: 09 January 2015
Revised: 12 February 2015
Accepted: 12 February 2015
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Corresponding Author:
XU Ying
E-mail: xuying@cma.gov.cn
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