In dieser Arbeit wird das regionale Klimamodell HIRHAM mit einer horizontalen Auflösung von 50 km und 19 vertikalen Schichten erstmals auf den asiatischen Kontinent angewendet, um die indische Monsunzirkulation unter rezenten und paläoklimatischen Bedingungen zu simulieren. Das Integrationsgebiet des Modells erstreckt sich von etwa 0ºN - 50ºN und 42ºE - 110ºE und bedeckt dabei sowohl die hohe Topographie des Himalajas und Tibet Plateaus als auch den nördlichen Indischen Ozean. Das Ziel besteht in der Beschreibung der regionalen Kopplung zwischen der Monsunzirkulation und den orographischen sowie diabatischen Antriebsmechanismen. Eine 44-jährige Modellsimulation von 1958-2001, die am seitlichen und unteren Rand von ECMWF Reanalysen (ERA40) angetrieben wird, bildet die Grundlage für die Validierung der Modellergebnisse mit Beobachtungen auf der Basis von Stations- und Gitterdatensätzen. Der Fokus liegt dabei auf der atmosphärischen Zirkulation, der Temperatur und dem Niederschlag im Sommer- und Wintermonsun, wobei die Qualität des Modells sowohl in Bezug zur langfristigen und dekadischen Klimatologie als auch zur interannuellen Variabilität evaluiert wird. Im Zusammenhang mit einer realistischen Reproduktion der Modelltopographie kann für die Muster der Zirkulation und Temperatur eine gute Übereinstimmung zwischen Modell und Daten nachgewiesen werden. Der simulierte Niederschlag zeigt eine bessere Übereinstimmung mit einem hoch aufgelösten Gitterdatensatz über der Landoberfläche Zentralindiens und in den Hochgebirgsregionen, der den Vorteil des Regionalmodells gegenüber der antreibenden Reanalyse hervorhebt. In verschiedenen Fall- und Sensitivitätsstudien werden die wesentlichen Antriebsfaktoren des indischen Monsuns (Meeresoberflächentemperaturen, Stärke des winterlichen Sibirischen Hochs und Anomalien der Bodenfeuchte) untersucht. Die Ergebnisse machen deutlich, dass die Simulation dieser Mechanismen auch mit einem Regionalmodell sehr schwierig ist, da die Komplexität des Monsunsystems hochgradig nichtlinear ist und die vor allem subgridskalig wirkenden Prozesse im Modell noch nicht ausreichend parametrisiert und verstanden sind. Ein paläoklimatisches Experiment für eine 44-jährige Zeitscheibe im mittleren Holozän (etwa 6000 Jahre vor heute), die am Rand von einer globalen ECHAM5 Simulation angetrieben wird, zeigt markante Veränderungen in der Intensität des Monsuns durch die unterschiedliche solare Einstrahlung, die wiederum Einflüsse auf die SST, die Zirkulation und damit auf die Niederschlagsmuster hat. / In this study the regional climate model HIRHAM with a horizontal resolution of 50 km and 19 vertical levels is applied over the Asian continent to simulate the Indian monsoon circulation under present-day and past conditions. The integration domain extends from 0ºN - 50ºN and 42ºE - 110ºE and covers the high topography of Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau as well as the northern Indian Ocean. The main objective is the description of the regional coupling between monsoon circulation and orographic as well as thermal driving mechanisms of monsoon. A 44-years long simulation from 1958-2001, driven at the lateral and lower boundaries by European reanalysis (ERA40), is the basis for the validation of model results with observations based on station and gridded data sets. The focus is on the the long-term and decadal summer and winter monsoon climatology and its variability concerning atmospheric circulation, temperature and precipitation. The results successfully reproduce the observations due to a realistic simulation of topographic features. The simulated precipitation shows a better agreement with a high-resolution gridded data set over the central land areas of India and in the higher elevated Tibetan and Himalayan regions than ERA40. In different case and sensitivity studies the main driving mechanisms of the Indian monsoon (Sea Surface Temperatures, strength of the Siberian High in winter and soil moisture anomalies) are investigated. The results show, that the simulation of these mechanisms with a regional climate model is also difficult related to the complex non linear monsoon system and the small-scale processes, which are not just sufficiently parameterized and understood in the model. A paleoclimatic experiment for a 44-years long time slice in mid-holocene (6000 years before present), which is driven by a global ECHAM5 simulation, shows significant changes in the monsoon intensity due to the different solar forcing, which influences the SST, the circulation and the precipitation.

This thesis evaluates regional hydrology using output from the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM 4.1) and examines changes in the hydrological processes over the Churchill River Basin (CRB) by employing the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrology model. The CRCM evaluation has been performed by combining the atmospheric and the terrestrial water budget components of the hydrological cycle. The North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) data are used where direct observations are not available. The outcome of the evaluation reveals the potential of the CRCM for use in long-term hydrological studies. The CRCM atmospheric moisture fluxes and storage tendencies show reasonable agreement with the NARR. The long-term moisture flux over the CRB was found to be generally divergent during summer. A systematic bias is observed in the CRCM precipitation and temperature. A quantile-based mapping of the cumulative distribution function is applied for precipitation adjustments. The temperature correction only involves shifting and scaling to adjust mean and variance. The results indicate that the techniques employed for correction are useful for hydrological studies. Bias-correction is also applied to the CRCM future climate. The CRCM bias-corrected data is then used for hydrological modeling of the CRB. The VIC-simulated streamflow exhibits acceptable agreement with observations. The VIC model's internal variables such as snow and soil moisture indicate that the model is capable of simulating internal process variables adequately. The VIC-simulated snow and soil moisture shows the potential of use as an alternative dataset for hydrological studies. Streamflow along with precipitation and temperature are analyzed for trends. No statistically significant trend is observed in the daily precipitation series. Results suggest that an increase in temperature may reduce accumulation of snow during fall and winter. The flow regime may be in transition from a snowmelt dominated regime to a rainfall dominated regime. Results from future climate simulations of the A2 emission scenario indicate a projected increase of streamflow, while the snow depth and duration exhibit a decrease. Soil moisture response to future climate warming shows an overall increase with a greater likelihood of occurrences of higher soil moisture.

This thesis evaluates regional hydrology using output from the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM 4.1) and examines changes in the hydrological processes over the Churchill River Basin (CRB) by employing the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrology model. The CRCM evaluation has been performed by combining the atmospheric and the terrestrial water budget components of the hydrological cycle. The North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) data are used where direct observations are not available. The outcome of the evaluation reveals the potential of the CRCM for use in long-term hydrological studies. The CRCM atmospheric moisture fluxes and storage tendencies show reasonable agreement with the NARR. The long-term moisture flux over the CRB was found to be generally divergent during summer. A systematic bias is observed in the CRCM precipitation and temperature. A quantile-based mapping of the cumulative distribution function is applied for precipitation adjustments. The temperature correction only involves shifting and scaling to adjust mean and variance. The results indicate that the techniques employed for correction are useful for hydrological studies. Bias-correction is also applied to the CRCM future climate. The CRCM bias-corrected data is then used for hydrological modeling of the CRB. The VIC-simulated streamflow exhibits acceptable agreement with observations. The VIC model's internal variables such as snow and soil moisture indicate that the model is capable of simulating internal process variables adequately. The VIC-simulated snow and soil moisture shows the potential of use as an alternative dataset for hydrological studies. Streamflow along with precipitation and temperature are analyzed for trends. No statistically significant trend is observed in the daily precipitation series. Results suggest that an increase in temperature may reduce accumulation of snow during fall and winter. The flow regime may be in transition from a snowmelt dominated regime to a rainfall dominated regime. Results from future climate simulations of the A2 emission scenario indicate a projected increase of streamflow, while the snow depth and duration exhibit a decrease. Soil moisture response to future climate warming shows an overall increase with a greater likelihood of occurrences of higher soil moisture.

Regional climate models are commonly used for downscaling global climate simulations to the regional scale using nested limited-area models. One of the main goals of this work was the application of regional model RegCM in very high resolution for the region with complex topography in the framework of EC FP6 project CECILIA. RegCM was employed to downscale climate change scenario simulations performed by ECHAM5 model according to the IPCC A1B emission scenario for Central and Eastern Europe in 10km resolution. Validation of model performance, assessed by nesting RegCM in ERA-40 reanalysis, shows improvement of regional climate patterns mainly in mountainous areas. Temperature is well represented with mostly cold bias around -1 žC. Precipitation is affected by large biases around 80 %, in mountainous areas up to 400 % overestimation in winter. Downscaled climate change signal shows average warming 0.5­1.5 žC in period 2021­2050 and 2­4 žC in period 2071­2100. Precipitation changes are mostly within ±0.5 mm/day. RegCM3­beta version with adjusted precipitation scheme parameters shows improvement of the precipitation bias, difference in climate change is rather negligible. Experiments with different convection schemes of RegCM in a case study for Africa performed in the framework of CORDEX project are...

Continentality of climate is one of the basic climate phenomena, describing the climate at current place according to annual changes of basic meteorological elements such as temperature, precipitation, etc. Its measure is usually expressed by indices and is being determined either according to observations using collected data or simulated by climate models. The goal is usually to determine the ability of climate models to represent the present state of climate and to determine and analyse the scenarios of future evolvement for Europe as an examined area. In present diploma thesis are briefly introduced terms like continentality, its indices, global and regional climate models, the ERA-Interim reanalysis, as well as the EURO-CORDEX iniciative. Subsequently individual simulations are processed, analysed and compared with the observations according to the E-OBS dataset.

No description available.

Warmer air temperatures projected for the mid-21st century under climate change are expected to translate to increased evaporation and a re-distribution of precipitation around the world, including in the mid-latitude, continental Athabasca River region in northern Alberta, Canada. This study examines how these projected changes will affect the water balance of various lake sizes. A thermodynamic lake model, MyLake, is used to determine evaporation over three theoretical lake basins – a shallow lake, representative of perched basins in the Peace-Athabasca Delta near Fort Chipewyan; an intermediate-depth lake representative of industrial water storage near Fort McMurray; and a deep lake representative of future off-stream storage of water by industry, also near Fort McMurray. Bias-corrected climate data from an ensemble of Regional Climate Models are incorporated in MyLake, and the water balance is completed by calculating the change in storage as the difference between precipitation and evaporation. Results indicate that evaporation and precipitation are projected to increase in the future by similar magnitudes, thus not significantly changing the long-term water balance of the lakes. However, intra-annual precipitation and evaporation patterns are projected to shift within the year, changing seasonal water level cycles, and the magnitudes and frequencies of extreme 1-, 3- and 5-day weather events are projected to increase. These results demonstrate that future climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies should take into account increases in intra-annual variability and extreme events on water levels of lakes in mid-latitude, interior hydroclimatic regimes. / Graduate / 0368 / walkerg@uvic.ca

The conventional approach to the frequency analysis of extreme rainfall is complicated by non-stationarity resulting from climate change. In this study significant trends in extreme rainfall are detected using statistical trend tests (Mann-Kendall test and t-test) for all over the Korean Peninsula. The violation of the stationarity for 1 hour annual maximum series is detected for large part of the area especially for southwestern and northeastern regions. For stations showing non-stationarity, the non-stationary generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution model with a location parameter in the form of linear function of time makes significant improvement in modeling rainfall extremes when compared to the stationary GEV model. The Bartlett-Lewis rainfall model is used to generate annual maximum series for the purpose of generating the Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) curve. Using 100 sets of 50 year synthetic annual maxima, it is found that the observed annual rainfall maximum series are reasonably represented by the model. The observed data is perturbed by change factors to incorporate the climate change scenario from the WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) regional climate model into IDF estimates. The IDF curves for the future period 2040-2079 show highest estimates for all return periods and rainfall durations. The future IDF estimates show significant difference from the IDF estimates of the historical period (1968-2000). Overall, IDF curves show an increasing tendency over time. A historical and future climate simulation is evaluated over the Colorado River Basin using a 111-year simulation (1969-2079) of the WRF climate change scenario. We find the future projections show statistically significant increases in temperature with larger increases in the northern part of the basin. There are statistically insignificant increases in precipitation, while snowfall shows a statistically significant decrease throughout the period in all but the highest elevations and latitudes. The strongest decrease in snowfall is seen at high elevations in the southern part of the basin and low elevations in the northern part of the basin.

The climate of West Africa is characterised by a monsoonal system that brings rainfall onto the subcontinent during an annual rainy season. From the late 60's to the mid-90's, rainfall levels significantly below average were observed, which brought severe socio-economic implications. The causes of the uncharacteristically long drought period, and indeed the mechanisms underpinning West African climate were poorly understood at the time, but have since attracted growing attention from the scientific community. Amongst the factors identified as critical is the interaction between the Earth surface and the atmosphere. To investigate these interactions over West Africa we have adopted an approach based upon regional climate modelling, an internationally recognised discipline enabling the representation of past and future climates, and the study of specific meteorological mechanisms. Using the regional climate model MAR, we have carried out simulations of the West African climate for the years 1986, 1987, and 1988. To improve the accuracy with which the model represents the biosphere, a new dataset describing the local vegetation was incorporated and a new scheme for the representation of roots implemented. A measure of the internal variability inherent to all results produced with this, and other such models, was determined. Subsequently, the influence of soil moisture anomalies on the model behaviour was investigated. The latest version of the model was validated by comparing it to observational data for selected years. Our results have prooven the ability of the improved MAR to simulate the West African climate, its monsoon and its spatial and temporal behaviour and provide strong evidence of its suitability for further investigation of the surface-atmosphere interactions over West Africa.

The climate of West Africa is characterised by a monsoonal system that brings rainfall onto the subcontinent during an annual rainy season. From the late 60's to the mid-90's, rainfall levels significantly below average were observed, which brought severe socio-economic implications. The causes of the uncharacteristically long drought period, and indeed the mechanisms underpinning West African climate were poorly understood at the time, but have since attracted growing attention from the scientific community. Amongst the factors identified as critical is the interaction between the Earth surface and the atmosphere. To investigate these interactions over West Africa we have adopted an approach based upon regional climate modelling, an internationally recognised discipline enabling the representation of past and future climates, and the study of specific meteorological mechanisms. Using the regional climate model MAR, we have carried out simulations of the West African climate for the years 1986, 1987, and 1988. To improve the accuracy with which the model represents the biosphere, a new dataset describing the local vegetation was incorporated and a new scheme for the representation of roots implemented. A measure of the internal variability inherent to all results produced with this, and other such models, was determined. Subsequently, the influence of soil moisture anomalies on the model behaviour was investigated. The latest version of the model was validated by comparing it to observational data for selected years. Our results have prooven the ability of the improved MAR to simulate the West African climate, its monsoon and its spatial and temporal behaviour and provide strong evidence of its suitability for further investigation of the surface-atmosphere interactions over West Africa.