Rapport Klima 3, 2003

Rasmus E Benestad

A first-order evaluation of climate outlooks based on the IPCC A2 and B2 SRES emission scenarios

The output from transient simulations of temperature and precipitation from 8 different climate model derived using the IPCC SRES emission scenarios A2 and B2 as boundary conditions was examined. The climate model data was converted from the GRIB format to netCDF and subject to a simple analysis. An ensemble was constructed from the results of different models. A first-order evaluation of the geographical distribution of the mean climatic elements suggests a high degree of realism in the model scenarios.

An analysis was carried out examining the ensemble mean and the spread. Furthermore, the dependency of estimated trend to the altitude, distance from the coast, and latitude was investigated. A comparison between temperature trends suggest most rapid warming in the high northern latitudes and strongest precipitation trends in the troics.

Keywords: Climate change; climate model evaluation; trend analysis; multi-model ensemble

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