Probabilistic Projections of Climate Change over China under the SRES A1B Scenario Using 28 AOGCMs

Abstract

Probabilistic projection of climate change consists of formulating the climate change information in a probabilistic manner at either global or regional scale. This can produce useful results for studies of the impact of climate change impact and change mitigation. In the present study, a simple yet effective approach is proposed with the purpose of producing probabilistic results of climate change over China for the middle and end of the twenty-first century under the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios A1B (SRES A1B) emission scenario. Data from 28 coupled atmosphere–ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs) are used. The methodology consists of ranking the 28 models, based on their ability to simulate climate over China in terms of two model evaluation metrics. Different weights were then given to the models according to their performances in present-day climate. Results of the evaluation for the current climate show that five models that have relatively higher resolutions—namely, the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia ECHAM4 (INGV ECHAM4), the third climate configuration of the Met Office Unified Model (UKMO HadCM3), the CSIRO Mark version 3.5 (Mk3.5), the NCAR Community Climate System Model, version 3 (CCSM3), and the Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate 3.2, high-resolution version [MIROC3.2 (hires)]—perform better than others over China. Their corresponding weights (normalized to 1) are 0.289, 0.096, 0.058, 0.048, and 0.044, respectively. Under the A1B scenario, surface air temperature is projected to increase significantly for both the middle and end of the twenty-first century, with larger magnitude over the north and in winter. There are also significant increases in rainfall in the twenty-first century under the A1B scenario, especially for the period 2070–99. As far as the interannual variability is concerned, the most striking feature is that there are high probabilities for the future intensification of interannual variability of precipitation over most of China in both winter and summer. For instance, over the Yangtze–Huai River basin (28°–35°N, 105°–120°E), there is a 60% probability of increased interannual standard deviation of precipitation by 20% in summer, which is much higher than that of the mean precipitation. In general there are small differences between weighted and unweighted projections, but the uncertainties in the projected changes are reduced to some extent after weighting.