Downscaling the climate change for oceans around Australia

Abstract

Abstract. At present, global climate models used to project changes in climate do not resolve mesoscale ocean features such as boundary currents and eddies. These missing features may be important to realistically project the marine impacts of climate change. Here we present a framework for dynamically downscaling coarse climate change projections utilising a global ocean model that resolves these features in the Australian region. The downscaling model used here is ocean-only. The ocean feedback on the air-sea fluxes is explored by restoring to surface temperature and salinity, as well as a calculated feedback to wind stress. These feedback approximations do not replace the need for fully coupled models, but they allow us to assess the sensitivity of the ocean in downscaled climate change simulations. Significant differences are found in sea surface temperature, salinity, stratification and transport between the downscaled projections and those of the climate model. While the magnitude of the climate change differences may vary with the feedback parameterisation used, the patterns of the climate change differences are consistent and develop rapidly indicating they are mostly independent of feedback that ocean differences may have on the air-sea fluxes. Until such a time when it is feasible to regularly run a global climate model with eddy resolution, our framework for ocean climate change downscaling provides an attractive way to explore how climate change may affect the mesoscale ocean environment.