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Project Leader	Prof. Congbin FU START Regional Center for Temperate East Asia Institute of Atmospheric Physics Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100029 CHINA Tel: +86-10-6204-1317 Fax: +86-10-6204-5230 Email: fcb@ast590.tea.ac.cn
Funding	US $95,000
Participating countries	Australia, P.R. China, India, Japan, R.O. Korea, USA

Introduction/Background
In recent years an increasing number of research groups are using different versions of RCM to simulate regional climate change in Asia. In order to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of present regional climate models so that better projection of regional climate change can be provided, an intercomparison study of the performance of various RCMs regarding their capacity of simulating the regional climate of Asia is strongly required. This situation is similar to that of applying Global Climate Models (GCMs) for Asia. For example, the on-going AMIP (Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project) and CMIP (Coupled Ocean-Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project) have proved helpful for improvement of GCMs and their application for Asia. However, most of these GCMs are not able to capture the regional characteristics of Asia because of her well-developed monsoon climate, complicated topography and ecosystem distribution, and particularly strong human impacts. Regarding the application of RCMs for Asia, although some case studies have been carried out to validate the RCMs by different research groups, a more systematic intercomparison study to evaluate the capacity of these models in simulating the regional climate of Asia and their distinctiveness in comparison with the GCMs will be of great benefit for further improvement of the RIEMS for East Asia and other RCMs focusing on APN region.

Outline of activities conducted
This project combines the work of nearly ten research groups working on RCM applications for Asia into the inter-comparison study. In fiscal year 2000-2001, the project focused on an 18-month simulation 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 in 1998. The following activities were implemented in accordance with the research focus:

Activity 1. An experiment design meeting.
The meeting was held at Yonsei University, Seoul, R.O. Korea in June 26-29, 2000 and participated by major RCM research groups. The meeting agreed on the model integration period, domain, driving fields, land cover data and topography data, data for model validation, model outputs for first-step analysis and further analysis, and the content of model validation analysis for the first step. The meeting also set a timetable for the implementation of model inter-comparison.

Activity 2. Preparation of commonly used data for initial and lateral boundary in a common format and station data for model evaluation.
Most of the groups accessed the NCEP data through NCAR and created the driving fields according to the agreed domain and horizontal resolution, but with the features of each model being taken into account. The common land cover and topography data at 60km resolution were used by each group. The surface station data for validation were obtained from China, Korea, Japan, India and Mongolia. For places that station data could not be obtained, the open data in 185 stations, which include monthly precipitation, average temperature and sea level pressure, were taken from "Monthly Climatic Data for the World" published by World Meteorological Organization.

Activity 3. Model run.
Simulation of 18 months for the large domain of Asia (600-1500E longitude, 50-650N latitude) were undertaken by ten groups. Currently, five groups have finished their integration, another five groups are still working on the integration due to some unforeseen problems.

Activity 4. Fellowships to support the project.
Per invitation of Prof. J. McGregor from Division of Atmospheric Research, CSIRO, Australia, Ms. Shuyu Wang from START TEA-RC visited CSIRO from September 2000 through February 2001. Ms. Wang learned to run a RCM called DARLAM, developed at CSIRO, and other RMIP related activities.

Mr. Jianpin Tang from Nanjing University will visit CIRES of University of Colorado to use a RCM called ARCSYM in the first half of 2001, after he finishes the model run of ARCSYM model at Nanjing University.

Mr. Zhe Xiong from START TEA-RC will pay a visit to IITAP of Iowa State University in the first half of 2001 to share the experience of the PIRCS project led by IITAP which is focused on the RCM intercomparison in North America.

Activity 5. Summary workshop of RMIP.
The workshop is scheduled to be held in 27 February - 1 March 2001 at START TEA-RC. The workshop will examine model outputs from different RCMs and conduct first-step analysis of the simulation results. The writing of research papers and recommendations for policy makers will be discussed. Other actions to continue the project, such as further analysis of the results from the 18-month simulation, and preparation for the 10-year simulation with a focus on data, will be discussed too.

Outcomes/Products
Within a common framework for intercomparison, the participating groups are running their regional climate models. Some of the model runs are complete and outputs are available for analysis. The outputs from the RIEMS developed at the START TEA-RC show that the RIEMS can simulate the temperature change at seasonal scale quite well, especially the monthly maximal and minimal temperature. However, the simulation of precipitation and evolution of rain belt, and the sea level pressure of the West Pacific Ocean needs to be further improved. Further analysis and intercomparison with available outputs from other RCMs are being conducted.

The expected outcomes are as follows:

1) The advantages and disadvantages of various RCMs can be recognised and the analysis results will be used for further improvement of RCMs.

2) The capacity of studying regional climate change in developing countries can be enhanced.

3) Papers and recommendations for policy makers will be presented to policy makers, including:

• An evaluation report describing the advantages and disadvantages of each RCM;
• The results incorporated to the IPCC Report 2001 for the analysis of regional climate change; and
• Case studies such as the prediction of the aridification trend in North China.

1) Further analyse of other important outputs from the 18-month simulation because the intercomparison of nearly 10 different RCMs is more difficult than anticipated.

2) Publish the results from the 18-month simulation, after a workshop to summarize the complete set of achievements. The publications will include a preliminary assessment of RCMs, and a summary of advantages and disadvantages of different RCMs through intercomparison.

3) Plan to conduct a 10-year simulation (1989 to 1998) to examine the statistical behavior of model capacity, the sensitivity of models to parameterization of physical processes, lateral boundary schemes, initial field and land cover characteristics, and their capacity of reproducing observed inter-annual temperature and precipitation variability in current vegetation type condition.