The Regional Climate Model(RegCM)proves valuable for climate analysis and has been applied to a wide range of climate change aspects and other environmental issues at a regional scale.The model also demonstrated success in diverse areas of urban research,including urban heat island studies,extreme climate events analysis,assessing urban resilience,and evaluating urbanization impacts on climate and air quality.Recently,more studies have been conducted in utilizing RegCM to address climate change in cities,due to its enhanced ability over the years to capture meteorological phenomena at city scales.However,there are many challenges associated with its implementation in meso-scale research,which are attributed to various shortcomings and thus create room for further improvement in the model.This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the evolution of the RegCM over the years and its customisation across various parameters,demonstrating its versatility in urban climate studies and underscoring the model’s pivotal role in addressing multifaceted challenges in urban environments.By addressing these aspects,the paper offers valuable insights and recommendations for researchers seeking to enhance the accuracy and efficacy of urban climate simulations using the RegCM system,thereby contributing to the advancement of urban climate science and sustainability.
Temperature extremes over rapidly urbanizing regions with high population densities have been scrutinized due to their severe impacts on human safety and economics.First of all,the performance of the regional climate model RegCM4 with a hydrostatic or non-hydrostatic dynamic core in simulating seasonal temperature and temperature extremes was evaluated over the historical period of 1991–99 at a 12-km spatial resolution over China and a 3-km resolution over the Beijing−Tianjin−Hebei(JJJ)region,a typical urban agglomeration of China.Simulations of spatial distributions of temperature extremes over the JJJ region using RegCM4 with hydrostatic and non-hydrostatic cores showed high spatial correlations of more than 0.8 with the observations.Under a warming climate,temperature extremes of annual maximum daily temperature(TXx)and summer days(SU)in China and the JJJ region showed obvious increases by the end of the 21st century while there was a general reduction in frost days(FD).The ensemble of RegCM4 with different land surface components was used to examine population exposure to temperature extremes over the JJJ region.Population exposure to temperature extremes was found to decrease in 2091−99 relative to 1991−99 over the majority of the JJJ region due to the joint impacts of increases in temperature extremes over the JJJ and population decreases over the JJJ region,except for downtown areas.Furthermore,changes in population exposure to temperature extremes were mainly dominated by future population changes.Finally,we quantified changes in exposure to temperature extremes with temperature increase over the JJJ region.This study helps to provide relevant policies to respond future climate risks over the JJJ region.
Quantification of the impact of winter wheat irrigation on the climate and the occurrence of extreme climatic events over North China is crucial for regional adaptation planning.Previous related studies mainly focused on the impact on surface processes;however,few focused on the effects of extreme events using high-resolution nonhydrostatic regional climate models.Here,the 9-km-resolution nonhydrostatic RegCM4.7 was coupled with a crop irrigation scheme and an updated winter wheat irrigation dataset to better simulate irrigation effects.Two experiments were conducted with and without winter wheat irrigation to isolate the effects of irrigation.Results showed that irrigation simulation reduces the model biases in temperature,precipitation,latent heat flux,soil moisture,sensitive heat flux,and top-layer soil moisture.Moreover,it also reduces the bias and increases the correlation with observations obtained in irrigated areas,especially in summer,indicating better representation of irrigation schemes.Winter wheat irrigation tends to cause substantial cooling of the local surface maximum,minimum,and mean air temperatures(by-1.68,-0.34,and-0.79℃,respectively)over irrigated areas of North China,with the largest changes observed in relation to maximum temperature.Additionally,precipitation is found to increase during spring and summer,which is strongly related to water vapor transport in the lower levels of the atmosphere.Further analyses indicated that the number of annual mean hot days decrease(-13.9 d),whereas the number of both comfort days(+10.2 d)and rainy days(days with total precipitation greater than 1 mm:+6.6 d)increase over irrigated areas,demonstrating beneficial feedback to human perception and agriculture.Fortunately,although the heat wave risk increases(number of annual mean heat wave days:+5.8 d),the impact is limited to small areas within irrigated region.Additionally,no notable change was found in terms of heavy rainfall events and precipitation intensity,which might be an undereastimation caused by
Mid-high latitude Northern Asia is one of the most vulnerable and sensitive areas to global warming,but relatively less studied previously.We used an ensemble of a regional climate model(RegCM4)projections to assess future changes in surface air temperature,precipitation and Köppen-Trewartha(K-T)climate types in Northern Asia under the 1.5-4℃global warming targets.RegCM4 is driven by five CMIP5 global models over an East Asia domain at a grid spacing of 25 km.Validation of the present day(1986-2005)simulations shows that the ensembles of RegCM4(ensR)and driving GCMs(ensG)reproduce the major characters of the observed temperature,precipitation and K-T climate zones reasonably well.Greater and more realistic spatial detail is found in RegCM4 compared to the driving GCMs.A general warming and overall increases in precipitation are projected over the region,with these changes being more pronounced at higher warming levels.The projected warming by ensR shows different spatial patterns,and is in general lower,compared to ensG in most months of the year,while the percentage increases of precipitation are maximum during the cold months.The future changes in K-T climate zones are characterized by a substantial expansion of Dc(temperature oceanic)and retreat of Ec(sub-arctic continental)over the region,reaching∼20%under the 4℃warming level.The most notable change in climate types in ensR is found over Japan(∼60%),followed by Southern Siberia,Mongolia,and the Korean Peninsula(∼40%).The largest change in the K-T climate types is found when increasing from 2 to 3℃.The results will help to better assess the impacts of climate change and in implementation of appropriate adaptation measures over the region.
Two simulations of five years (2003-2007) were conducted with the Regional Climate models RegCM4, one coupled with Land surface models BATS and the other with CLM4.5 over West Africa, where simulated air temperature and precipitation were analyzed. The purpose of this study is to assess the performance of RegCM4 coupled with the new CLM4.5 Landsurface scheme and the standard one named BATS in order to find the best configuration of RegCM4 over West African. This study could improve our understanding of the sensitivity of land surface model in West Africa climate simulation, and provide relevant information to RegCM4 users. The results show fairly realistic restitution of West Africa’s climatology and indicate correlations of 0.60 to 0.82 between the simulated fields (BATS and CLM4.5) for precipitation. The substitution of BATS surface scheme by CLM4.5 in the model configuration, leads mainly to an improvement of precipitation over the Atlantic Ocean, however, the impact is not sufficiently noticeable over the continent. While the CLM4.5 experiment restores the seasonal cycles and spatial distribution, the biases increase for precipitation and temperature. Positive biases already existing with BATS are amplified over some sub-regions. This study concludes that temporal localization (seasonal effect), spatial distribution (grid points) and magnitude of precipitation and temperature (bias) are not simultaneously improved by CLM4.5. The introduction of the new land surface scheme CLM4.5, therefore, leads to a performance of the same order as that of BATS, albeit with a more detailed formulation.
Adjon Anderson KouassiBrahima KoneSiélé SilueAlima DajumaToure E. N’datchohMarcellin AdonArona DiedhiouVéronique Yoboue
