The study aims to generate a simulated, ultra high-resolution climatology over the southwestern Cape of South Africa, and in particular the Stellenbosch wine producing region, by the dynamical downscaling of observed synoptic-scale circulation. A variable-resolution global model, the conformal-cubic atmospheric model (CCAM), and a multiple-nudging strategy are applied in order to reach this goal. CCAM is employed in stretched-grid mode as a regional climate model (RCM) to simulate climate for the period 1976-2005 at four different spatial resolutions. Nudging from coarse-resoltion (2.5° in latitude and longitude), the model was first applied at a 60 km resolution over southern Africa in order to obtain a simulation of the synoptic-scale circulation over the region. Two higher resolution simulations, at 8 km and 1 km resolution, were obtained consecutively over the western and southwestern Cape, nudging from the 60 km and 8 km simulations, respectively. Finally, a 200 m simulation was performed over the Stellenbosch region. Because of the high computational requirements of high-resolution runs, each progressively higher resolution simulation is performed over a progressively smaller area of interest over which the spatial resolution is high. The simulations verify well against observed datasets, and generally capture the important climatic features over the area of interest. The 60 km CCAM simulation gives a good representation of the synoptic scale weather over southern Africa, with realistic seasonal circulation patterns and rainfall percentages as well as intra-annual rainfall totals over various regions. The mesoscale climate over the Western Cape of South Africa is captured by the 8 km simulation, especially with respect to seasonal variations in temperature and rainfall percentages - although the actual rainfall over the southwestern tip of the Western Cape is severely underestimated. The ultra high-resolution simulated diurnal cycle of temperature, relative humidity and screen level wind speed compared well against observations for the month of February. The CCAM climate simulations might not be accurate enough for some of the very sensitive studies of the wine industry, but it can have great value for the demarcation of areas which are climatically suited for viticulture and some more general viticultural studies. Ultra high-resolution climate parameter maps are presented for 1976-2005. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology / Unrestricted

Three-dimensional (3D) planetary general circulation models (GCMs) have been derived from global climate models used to project 21st century changes in Earth's climate. GCMs are used to address questions regarding the climate-and habitability aspects of terrestrial planets within the solar system and assess the habitability of planets outside of the solar system, so called exoplanets. The development of GCMs has given rise to various results for concepts essential for determining potential habitable exoplanets such as the Habitable zone, hence intercomparison studies are of interest. In this project, the climate of an exoplanet with a static thermodynamic ocean will be modelled using ROCKE-3D, an open-source (3D) GCM developed at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. This is done in order to simulate the climate and examine how the simulations compare to other GCMs. The climate simulation will also be applied to an Earth-like planet in order to determine how an Earth-like climate will impact the results. We find that the climate on a rapidly rotating Aquaplanet receiving a G-star spectral energy distribution is surprisingly Earth-like. By contributing to a higher albedo, the ocean ice fraction of a rapidly rotating Aquaplanet was shown to impact the temperature and humidity structure considerably, despite the absence of Ocean Heat Transport. However, small differences between the simulations with and without sea ice were found for a tidally locked Aquaplanet receiving a M-star spectral energy distribution, which indicates that ROCKE-3D is not shutting off sea ice properly. Generally, ROCKE-3D shows similar results as CAM4 for the G-star runs and for the M-star, ROCKE-3D shows similar results to LMDG. / Tredimensionella (3D) planetariska allmänna cirkulationsmodeller (GCM) har härletts från de globala klimatmodeller som används för att projicera 2000-talets förändringar i jordens klimat. GCM används för att bemöta frågor om klimat- och beboelighetsaspekter av jordlika planeter inom solsystemet och bedöma beboeligheten för planeter utanför solsystemet, så kallade exoplaneter. Utvecklingen av GCM har gett upphov till olika resultat för begrepp som är väsentliga för att bestämma potentiella beboeliga exoplaneter såsom den beboerliga zonen, därför är jämförande studier av intresse. I detta projekt kommer klimatet för en exoplanet med ett statiskt termodynamiskt hav att modelleras av ROCKE-3D, en öppen källkod (3D) GCM utvecklad vid NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Detta görs för att simulera klimatet och undersöka hur simuleringarna står sig i jämförelse med andra GCMs. Klimatsimuleringen kommer också att tillämpas på en jordliknande planet för att avgöra hur ett jordliknande klimat kommer att påverka resultaten. Vi finner att klimatet på en snabbt roterande vattenplanet som mottar en G-stjärnig spektral energifördelning är överraskande jordliknande. Genom att bidra till ett högre albedo visade havsisfraktionen av en snabbt roterande Aquaplanet att påverka temperatur- och fuktstrukturen avsevärt, trots frånvaron av havsvärmetransport. Små skillnader mellan simuleringarna med-och utan havsis påvisades för en tidvattenlåst vattenplanet som mottar en M-stjärnig spektral energifördelning, vilket tyder på att ROCKE-3D inte bortser havsis ordentligt. Generellt visar ROCKE-3D liknande resultat som CAM4 för en G-stjärna. För en M-stjärna visar ROCKE-3D liknande resultat som LMDG.