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Future climate change scenarios in Central America at high spatial resolution

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Title Future climate change scenarios in Central America at high spatial resolution
 
Creator Imbach, Pablo
Chou, Sin Chan
Lyra, André
Rodrigues, Daniela
Rodríguez, Daniel
Latinovic, Dragan
Siqueira, Gracielle
Silva, Adan
Garofolo, Lucas
Georgiou, Selena
 
Subject climate change
cambio climático
rain
simulation models
modelos de simulación
seasons
estaciones del año
drought
 
Description The objective of this work is to assess the downscaling projections of climate change over Central America at 8-km resolution using the Eta Regional Climate Model, driven by the HadGEM2-ES simulations of RCP4.5 emission scenario. The narrow characteristic of continent supports the use of numerical simulations at very high-horizontal resolution. Prior to assessing climate change, the 30-year baseline period 1961–1990 is evaluated against different sources of observations of precipitation and temperature. The mean seasonal precipitation and temperature distribution show reasonable agreement with observations. Spatial correlation of the Eta, 8-km resolution, simulations against observations show clear advantage over the driver coarse global model simulations. Seasonal cycle of precipitation confirms the added value of the Eta at 8-km over coarser resolution simulations. The Eta simulations show a systematic cold bias in the region. Climate features of the Mid-Summer Drought and the Caribbean Low-Level Jet are well simulated by the Eta model at 8-km resolution. The assessment of the future climate change is based on the 30-year period 2021–2050, under RCP4.5 scenario. Precipitation is generally reduced, in particular during the JJA and SON, the rainy season. Warming is expected over the region, but stronger in the northern portion of the continent. The Mid-Summer Drought may develop in regions that do not occur during the baseline period, and where it occurs the strength may increase in the future scenario. The Caribbean Low-Level Jet shows little change in the future. Extreme temperatures have positive trend within the period 2021–2050, whereas extreme precipitation, measured by R50mm and R90p, shows positive trend in the eastern coast, around Costa Rica, and negative trends in the northern part of the continent. Negative trend in the duration of dry spell, which is an estimate based on evapotranspiration, is projected in most part of the continent. Annual mean water excess has negative trends in most part of the continent, which suggests decreasing water availability in the future scenario.
 
Date 2018
2018-05-10T16:00:15Z
2018-05-10T16:00:15Z
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Imbach, Pablo, Chou, Sin Chan, Lyra, André, Rodrigues, Daniela, Rodriguez, Daniel, Latinovic, Dragan, Siqueira, Gracielle, Silva, Adan, Garofolo, Lucas, Georgiou, Selena (2018). Future climate change scenarios in Central America at high spatial resolution. PLoS One, 13(4), e0193570.
1932-6203
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/92503
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193570
 
Language en
 
Rights CC-BY-4.0
Open Access
 
Format e0193570
 
Publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
 
Source PLOS ONE