PROJECT #1999-05
Towards Further Development of Regional Climate Model (RCM) and Application
for Asia
| Project Leader |
Prof. Congbin FU
Director, START REA RC
c/o Institute of Atmospheric Studies
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Ja Huo Ji, Da Sheng Men Wai Street
Beijing, 100029
CHINA
TEL: +86 10 6204 1317
FAX: +86 10 6204 5230
E-mail: fcb@ast590.tea.ac.cn
|
| Funding |
US$ 100,000
|
| Participating countries |
China, Denmark, India, Italy, Japan, N. Korea, S. Korea, Mongolia,
U.S.A.
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Introduction/Background
As pointed out in the latest IPCC report, "An important long-term goal
is the accurate projection of regional climate change, so that potential
impact can be adequately assessed." The key research challenge for
the next decade is the regional-scale estimate, analysis and impact assessment
of global change. The TEACOM/START-APN project "Regional Climate Model
(RCM) Development and Application for Asia" directly addresses such a challenge
to provide scientific base for policy makers to properly adopt the mitigation
strategy of regional climatic change. The primary purposes of this project
are to integrally analyse the characteristics of climatic and environmental
change in Asia monsoon region, and to make better projection of climate
change in Asia under regional anthropogenic forcing factors, based on developing
a coupled climate /biosphere /hydrology /chemical /aerosol regional model
for Asia.
The project has mainly three components:
- Development of a coupled climate /biosphere /hydrology /chemical
/aerosol regional model for Asia;
- Application of this model to project RCM change in Asia in next 20-50
years;
- Capacity building of research network.
The project received three years of continuous support from APN and
is implemented in conjunction with several national projects of the TEACOM
region. The Chinese Academy of Sciences provides the major research funding
for the project implementation in START TEA RC.
The progress of this project in the past three years has laid a solid
foundation for the further development of this project.
- Developed a concept of "General Monsoon System" which serves as the
theoretical framework of the project;
- Developed two major components of RCM: climate-vegetation coupling
and climate-aerosol coupling, and a new version of RCM for Asia, i.e.,
the Regional Integrated Environmental Modeling System for Asia (RIEMS);
- Developed a database and data-information-computation system for
RCM research;
- Established an international steering committee and a network for
RCM research;
- Enhanced human resources capacity through START fellowships and an
training course on the application of regional climate modeling for Asia
held in November, 1998 in Beijing.
The objective of this project for the fiscal year 1999-2000 focuses
on analysing the research results in the past years and developing a web-based
platform. We will try to evaluate the statistical behaviors of RIEMS in
their capacity of simulating regional climate and its response to anthropogenic
forcing factors, including CO2, sulphate aerosols and land use/cover change.
We will also try to transfer these scenarios into policy-relevant information
for policy makers to improve impact assessment and adopt mitigation strategy
regarding regional climatic change.
Outline of activities conducted
According to our proposal to APN, we conducted a series of activities
in the following aspects:
1) Researches:
In 1999, the following research activities have taken place:
- The START TEA RC has made a 10-year run of RIEMS for East Asia to
evaluate the statistical performance of RCM regarding its capacity of simulating
regional climate and climate variability of East Asia.
- The START TEA RC is making nest of RCM with GCM to examine the regional
climate change under the forcing of both CO2 and sulphate aerosol.
- One case study for the Yellow River in China was conducted
for policy relevant application of the RIEMS. By using RIEMS to simulate
the moisture condition (precipitation, evaporation, surface run-off, etc.)
at three sketches of Yellow River and comparing with the observed parameters
of moisture, we concluded that the cut-off of Yellow River discharge is
partly due to natural reasons, such as the decline of precipitation and
the enhancement of evaporation.
2) Development of web-based platform and data, information and computation
system for the RIEMS:
- The Web-based platform for RIEMS was developed at START TEA RC which
consists of six major parts: a).Introduction and registration; b). Domain
definition; c).Initial fields; d). Model run; e). Output; f). Display.
The platform has been open for use since 1999. The website of the platform
is: http://ultra2-3d.tea.ac.cn.
Users can login in this platform through the Internet and use the available
data to run the model for their own countries and regions. Up to now, about
30 scientists from at least 13 countries have used this platform including
China (including Taiwan), Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Russia, Fiji, Malaysia,
U.S.A., India, Thailand, Kenya, South Africa, Austria. The total amount
of transferred data is over 300MB.
- With the support of START, APN and CAS, more capacious hard disk
and related software were installed. The total storage capacity has increased
to 282GB and the available capacity reached 232GB. One network laser printer,
one data projector, one video presenter, two tape drivers and other facilities
were also installed. These facilities set up a powerful computation environment
to meet the requirements for the implementation of this project.
- Services for the operation of the platform were also provided, such
as platform demos and training, online data transmission, delivery of datasets
and RIEMS source code, preparation of RIEMS documentation, etc.
3) Fellowships
In the second half year of 1999, the START TEA RC hosted two scientists
Dr. RYU Gi-Ryol and Mr. JANG Hyon Chol from D.P.R. Korea for one month
and one scientist Mr. GOMBOLUUDEV Purevjav from Mongolia for three months.
They came to learn and conduct cooperative research about regional climate
modeling and the application of the RIEMS. Through a series of training
classes, they felt they had a primary understanding of regional climate
modeling and were prepared to undertake further study in order to apply
it to their own countries.
4) Workshop and training courses
- The TEACOM RCM SSC workshop for the TEACOM/START-APN RCM project
was held at International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste,
Italy, under co-sponsorship of ICTP and APN. SSC members and several invited
guests and observers attended the workshop. The progresses of RCM project
were reviewed and the future activities were discussed, with a focus on
a renewal proposal of the project on inter-comparison study of RCMs for
Asia (RMIP for Asia). Seven RCM research groups focussing on this region
would take part in this study.
- Under the joint support of APN and ICTP, four young scientists from
China, Dr. Yun Qian, Dr. Ming Chen, Dr. Zhuguo Ma and Dr. Yu Liu, attended
the training courses concurrently held in ICTP during June 5-27, 1999 for
young scientists on regional climate change analysis and modeling.
Outcomes/Products
Fu, C.B. and G. Wen, 1999: Variation of ecosystems over East Asia in
association with seasonal, interannual and decadal monsoon climate variability.
Climatic change, 43, 477-494.
Fu, C.B., H.F. Diaz, D.F. Dong, and J.O. Fletcher, 1999: Changes in
atmospheric circulation over northern hemisphere oceans associated with
the rapid warming of the 1920s. International Journal of Climatology,
19, 581-606.
Giorgi, Filippo, Y. Huang, K. Nishizawa and C. Fu, 1999: A seasonal
cycle simulation over eastern Asia and its sensitivity to radiative transfer
and surface processes, J.G.R. vol. 104, 6403-6424
Wei, H.L, C.B. Fu and W.C. Wang, 1998: The effect of lateral boundary
treatment of regional climate model on the East Asian summer monsoon rainfall
simulation. Chinese Journal of Atmospheric Sciences. Vol.22, No.3, 231-243
Fu, C.B. and L. Xie, 1998: Global oceanic climate anomalies in 1980's.
Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. Vol.15, No.2, 167-178
Fu, C.B. and D.Z. Ye, 1998: Towards predictive understanding of the
environmental change in China on decadal to centennial scales. Global
Environmental Research, Vol.1, No.1&2, 83-93.
Qian, Y. and F. Giorgi, 1999: Interactive coupling of regional climate
and sulfate aerosol models over eastern Asia. Journal of Geophysical
Research, Vol.104, No.D6, 6477-6499.
Wei, H.L. and C.B. Fu, 1998: Study of the sensitivity of a regional
model in response to land cover change over northern China. Hydrological
Processes, 12, 2249-2265.
Fu, C.B., H.L. Wei, M. Chen, B.K. Su, M. Zhao and W.Z. Zheng, 1998:
Simulation of the evolution of summer monsoon rainbelts over Eastern China
from regional climate model. Scientia Atmospherica Sinica. Vol.22, No.4,
522-534.
Qian, Y., H.Q. Wang, C.B. Fu and Z.F. Wang, 1998: The temporal and
special distribution of the radiative effects of the antrhopogenic sulfate
aerosols over East Asia. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. Vol.15, No.3.
Fu, C.B., H.L. Wei, Y. Qian and M. Chen: Documentation on Regional
Integrated Environmental Modeling System (RIEMS). Version 1, 1999.
Wang, L.Z., H.L. Wei: A User's Guide to on-line RIEMS. 1999.
Future directions/follow-up work
The future work of this project in 2000 is focused on Regional Climate
Model Inter-comparison to further improve the RCMs for Asia and to provide
better projection of regional climate change in Asia and assessment of
impact on Asia. We will try to combine the work of seven research groups
working on the RCM application for Asia through examining their statistical
behaviours in a 10-year continuous run; their capacity of reproducing extreme
climate events, such as flush floods and persistent severe droughts; and
their sensitivities to the parameterisation of physical processes, lateral
boundary schemes, initial field and land cover characteristics.
The main activities in 2000 is to have an 18-month run of RCMs for the
period from March 1997 to September 1998 during which a complete annual
cycle and two extreme climate events occurred in East Asia, including a
hot and drought summer in 1997 and a severe flood disaster in 1998. In
2001, we will have a 10-year run experiment from 1979 to 1998 to compare
with the AMIP run for the same period.
The implementation of these activities partially depends on our proposed
project for APN 2000-2001: Regional Climate Model Intercomparison for Asia.
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