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Consistency of observed winter precipitation trends in northern Europe with regional climate change projections
Jonas Bhend and Hans von StorchGKSS Research Institute, Geesthacht, Germany
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Motivation
> Gap between formal detection and attribution studies and “significant trends” studies
> Are the recent trends consistent with regional climate change projections?— Plausibility arguments— A priori assumption about the mechanism— Less informative than DnA but no estimate of natural variability
needed
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Data
> Observations:— CRU TS 2.1 monthly precipitation— 0.5° latitude-longitude grid
> Climate change scenarios:— RCAO simulations of the SMHI (PRUDENCE)— 0.44° rotated grid— Two different driving GCMs, HadAM3H and ECHAM4/OPYC3— Two emission scenarios SRES A2 and B2
— Four climate change scenarios defined as the difference between 1961-1990 and 2071-2100 mean
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Method
> Pattern correlation
S: Climate change signalO: Trends in observations
> Ratio of Intensities
with: and:
S 1
nSi2
i
PCC Si Oi
i
Si2
i
Oi2
i
O 1
nOi2
i
O
S
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Pattern correlation
> Patterns are similar> Better correspondence with ECHAM scenarios> Better correspondence with stronger GHG forcing (A2)
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Sensitivity of PCCs
> Bootstrap with CRU precip fields— randomly select precip fields— compute trends— correlate trend fields
> Autocorrelation:moving blocks bootstrap, 5 years
Histogram of PCCs for the Baltic catchment (shaded) and northern Europe (hatched)
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Pattern correlation
> PCCs for the Baltic catchment significant> PCCs for all of northern Europe are not significant for HadAM B2
> Above findings robust to removal of the NAO
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Intensity
> Change in the observations much stronger than in scenarios
— RCM simulations are wrong— additional forcings— natural variability
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Mean change
> Change in the observations much stronger than in scenarios— RCM simulations are wrong— additional forcings— natural variability
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Different trend lengths
> PCCs decrease with increasing trend length> Significance levels are not affected by choice of trend length
> Intensity and mean change decrease with increasing trend length
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Conclusions - pattern correlation
> Baltic catchment:— Regional climate change scenarios are consistent— Observed and expected patterns are similar and significant
> Northern Europe:— Regional climate change scenarios are partly consistent— Pattern similarity with HadAM signal could be random
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Conclusions - intensity
> Both intensity and mean change suggest that:
> Assuming the model response to anthropogenic forcing is correct, a large part (30 to 70 percent) of the observed trends is due to other factors (e.g. natural variability).
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