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The hydrological projections provided by the outputs of Global Climate Models (GCMs) combining hydrological models include multi‐source uncertainties, which may challenge the formulation of relevant adaption and mitigation policies. In this paper, the overall uncertainty and the relative contribution of each uncertainty component were investigated for hydrological projections over 408 watersheds in China by using 3 shared socioeconomic pathway emission scenarios (SSP1‐2.6, SSP2‐4.5, and SSP5‐8.5), 21 GCMs, 8 bias correction methods, 4 hydrological models, and 2 sets of optimized hydrological model parameters. The results show that the total uncertainty (T) is mainly contributed by uncertainty related to global climate models (G), with the mean percentage ranging from 60.4 to 64.1%, followed by the interaction uncertainties among all components, with the mean percentage ranging from 22.0 to 26.4%. The uncertainty contribution of hydrological models (H) (6.1–9.4%) ranks third, followed by emission scenarios (S) (2.9–5.9%) and bias correction methods (B) (0.2–1.1%). The uncertainty contribution of the optimized hydrological model parameters (P) (0.2–0.3%) is almost negligible. In terms of spatial variability, the relative contribution of uncertainty related to global climate models (G) is the highest in the near future for northern China (67.5–70.6%) and in the far future for southern China (66.1–66.7%). However, it was found to be lower for the Tibetan Plateau and northwestern China (45.3–57.9%) in the near and far future. The relative contribution of hydrological model uncertainty is higher for southwestern and northwestern China and the Tibetan Plateau (7.2–19.5%) and lower for northern, eastern, and southern China (2.5–6.6%). This study highlights the importance of including multiple GCMs and hydrological models in hydrological impact studies to consider their overall uncertainty. The development of global climate models and hydrological models is still the best way to reduce the uncertainty of climate change impact studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global climate change is expected to have a major impact on the hydrological cycle. Understanding potential changes in future extreme precipitation is important to the planning of industrial and agricultural water use, flood control, and ecological environment protection. In this paper, we study the statistical distribution of extreme precipitation based on historical observation and various global climate models (GCMs), and predict the expected change and the associated uncertainty. The empirical frequency, generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution, and L-moment estimator algorithms are used to establish the statistical distribution relationships and the multi-model ensemble predictions are established by the Bayesian model averaging (BMA) method. This ensemble forecast takes advantage of multi-model synthesis, which is an effective measure to reduce the uncertainty of model selection in extreme precipitation forecasting. We have analyzed the relationships among extreme precipitation, return period, and precipitation durations for 6 representative cities in China. More significantly, the approach allows for establishing the uncertainty of extreme precipitation predictions. The empirical frequency from the historical data is all within the 90% confidence interval of the BMA ensemble. For the future predictions, the extreme precipitation intensities of various durations tend to become larger compared to the historic results. The extreme precipitation under the RCP8.5 scenario is greater than that under the RCP2.6 scenario. The developed approach not only effectively gives the extreme precipitation predictions, but also can be used to any other extreme hydrological events in future climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In aiming for better access to climate change information and for providing climate service, it is important to obtain reliable high-resolution temperature simulations. Systematic comparisons are still deficient between statistical and dynamic downscaling techniques because of their inherent unavoidable uncertainties. In this paper, 20 global climate models (GCMs) and one regional climate model [Providing Regional Climates to Impact Studies (PRECIS)] are employed to evaluate their capabilities in reproducing average trends of mean temperature (Tm), maximum temperature (Tmax), minimum temperature (Tmin), diurnal temperature range (DTR), and extreme events represented by frost days (FD) and heat-wave days (HD) across China. It is shown generally that bias of temperatures from GCMs relative to observations is over ±1°C across more than one-half of mainland China. PRECIS demonstrates better representation of temperatures (except for HD) relative to GCMs. There is relatively better performance in Huanghuai, Jianghuai, Jianghan, south Yangzi River, and South China, whereas estimation is not as good in Xinjiang, the eastern part of northwest China, and the Tibetan Plateau. Bias-correction spatial disaggregation is used to downscale GCMs outputs, and bias correction is applied for PRECIS outputs, which demonstrate better improvement to a bias within ±0.2°C for Tm, Tmax, Tmin, and DTR and ±2 days for FD and HD. Furthermore, such improvement is also verified by the evidence of increased spatial correlation coefficient and symmetrical uncertainty, decreased root-mean-square error, and lower standard deviation for reproductions. It is seen from comprehensive ranking metrics that different downscaled models show the most improvement across different climatic regions, implying that optional ensembles of models should be adopted to provide sufficient high-quality climate information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology Earth System Model version 3 (NESM v3) has been developed, aiming to provide a numerical modeling platform for cross-disciplinary Earth system studies, project future Earth climate and environment changes, and conduct subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction. While the previous model version NESM v1 simulates the internal modes of climate variability well, it has no vegetation dynamics and suffers considerable radiative energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere and surface, resulting in large biases in the global mean surface air temperature, which limits its utility to simulate past and project future climate changes. The NESM v3 has upgraded atmospheric and land surface model components and improved physical parameterization and conservation of coupling variables. Here we describe the new version's basic features and how the major improvements were made. We demonstrate the v3 model's fidelity and suitability to address global climate variability and change issues. The 500-year preindustrial (PI) experiment shows negligible trends in the net heat flux at the top of atmosphere and the Earth surface. Consistently, the simulated global mean surface air temperature, land surface temperature, and sea surface temperature (SST) are all in a quasi-equilibrium state. The conservation of global water is demonstrated by the stable evolution of the global mean precipitation, sea surface salinity (SSS), and sea water salinity. The sea ice extents (SIEs), as a major indication of highlatitude climate, also maintain a balanced state. The simulated spatial patterns of the energy states, SST, precipitation, and SSS fields are realistic, but the model suffers from a cold bias in the North Atlantic, a warm bias in the Southern Ocean, and associated deficient Antarctic sea ice area, as well as a delicate sign of the double ITCZ syndrome. The estimated radiative forcing of quadrupling carbon dioxide is about 7.24Wm-2, yielding a climate sensitivity feedback parameter of -0:98Wm-2 K-1, and the equilibrium climate sensitivity is 3.69 K. The transient climate response from the 1%yr-1 CO2 (1pctCO2) increase experiment is 2.16 K. The model's performance on internal modes and responses to external forcing during the historical period will be documented in an accompanying paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To commemorate 100 years since the birth of Professor Duzheng YE, this paper reviews the contribution of Ye and his research team to the development from climate to global change science in the past 30 or so years, including: (1) the role of climate change in global change; (2) the critical time scales and predictability of global change; (3) the sensitive regions of global change-transitional zones of climate and ecosystems; and (4) orderly human activities and adaptation to global change, with a focus on the development of a proactive strategy for adaptation to such change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the uncertainty ranges of high flows under climate change in Jinhua River basin, eastern China. Four representative concentration pathways (RCPs), three global climate models (GCMs), 10 downscaling parameter sets and three hydrologic models are applied to simulate future discharges. Changes of annual maximum discharges are assessed for the baseline period (1961-1990) and future period (2011-2040). The uncertainties of annual maximum discharges are calculated for each uncertainty source and compared with different combinations of them. The minimum temperature will probably increase all year round in the future period and maximum temperature would increase in most cases. The changes of precipitation showed different directions by different models and emission scenarios. The annual maximum discharges would decrease for all RCPs. The order of uncertainty ranges of high flows due to different uncertainty sources from high to low is: hydrologic models, GCMs, parameter sets in the downscaling method and emission scenarios. It must be noted that the small uncertainty contribution from different emission scenarios is due to the study period when the differences in increase of radiative forcing and greenhouse gas concentration are less obvious between different RCPs compared to the second half of the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of carbon neutrality provides a new opportunity for the development of renewable energy, especially for wind power. In this paper, 11 regional climate models (RCMs) including CORDEX-EA and PRECIS at two different resolutions are used to evaluate the performance in simulating the spatio-temporal characteristics for wind speed and energy potential from 1981 to 2005. The results show that most models can reproduce the spatio-temporal patterns, and the simulation of the eastern region is better than that of the western region. Besides, most of the higher-resolution models had better simulation performance for spatial-temporal patterns and inter-annual variation. Then, the weighted multi-model ensemble is used to project the changes of the wind speed and the wind power density over China's mainland during the mid-21st century under the RCP8.5 scenario. In future, a decrease in wind speed is projected by most RCMs over China, although some regions, such as the southern parts of China, are projected to have more wind energy potential. The percentage variation of annual mean wind speed will remain in the range of ±4%. The wind power density will decrease in the north and the largest decrease will be found in the northwest. However, the annual mean wind power density in the southeast China will have an increase of 2.21% in the middle of this century. The inter-annual variation of the wind power density in most regions will increase by more than 20%. However, intra-annual variation in the wind power density is likely to decrease in most regions of China, ranging from about −20% to −50%. • A weighted multi-model ensemble was used to project the changes of wind power density over China. • The changes of annual mean wind power density vary in different sub-regions of China, ranging from −3.21% to 2.21%. • The inter-annual variation of the WPD in most regions will increase by more than 20%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We evaluated the potential impact of future climate change on spring maize and single-crop rice in northeastern China (NEC) by employing climate and crop models. Based on historical data, diurnal temperature change exhibited a distinct negative relationship with maize yield, whereas minimum temperature correlated positively to rice yield. Corresponding to the evaluated climate change derived from coupled climate models included in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) under the Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 scenario (RCP4.5), the projected maize yield changes for three future periods [2010-39 (period 1), 2040-69 (period 2), and 2070-99 (period 3)] relative to the mean yield in the baseline period (1976-2005) were 2.92%, 3.11% and 2.63%, respectively. By contrast, the evaluated rice yields showed slightly larger increases of 7.19%, 12.39%, and 14.83%, respectively. The uncertainties in the crop response are discussed by considering the uncertainties obtained from both the climate and the crop models. The range of impact of the uncertainty became markedly wider when integrating these two sources of uncertainty. The probabilistic assessments of the evaluated change showed maize yield to be relatively stable from period 1 to period 3, while the rice yield showed an increasing trend over time. The results presented in this paper suggest a tendency of the yields of maize and rice in NEC to increase (but with great uncertainty) against the background of global warming, which may offer some valuable guidance to government policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a review of paleoclimate modeling activities in China. Rather than attempt to cover all topics, we have chosen a few climatic intervals and events judged to be particularly informative to the international community. In historical climate simulations, changes in solar radiation and volcanic activity explain most parts of reconstructions over the last millennium prior to the industrial era, while atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations play the most important role in the 20th century warming over China. There is a considerable model-data mismatch in the annual and boreal winter temperature change over China during the mid-Holocene [6000 years before present (ka BP)], while coupled models with an interactive ocean generally perform better than atmospheric models. For the Last Glacial Maximum (21 ka BP), climate models successfully reproduce the surface cooling trend over China but fail to reproduce its magnitude, with a better performance for coupled models. At that time, reconstructed vegetation and western Pacific sea surface temperatures could have significantly affected the East Asian climate, and environmental conditions on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau were most likely very different to the present day. During the late Marine Isotope Stage 3 (30-40 ka BP), orbital forcing and Northern Hemisphere glaciation, as well as vegetation change in China, were likely responsible for East Asian climate change. On the tectonic scale, the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau uplift, the Tethys Sea retreat, and the South China Sea expansion played important roles in the formation of the East Asian monsoon-dominant environment pattern during the late Cenozoic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explored the projected changes in precipitation, maximum temperature (T max), and minimum temperature (T min) over the Yangtze River Basin (YRB) based on 23 Global climate models (GCMs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6). The Empirical Quantile Mapping (EQM) approach was firstly applied to correct the biases in the GCMs. Next, the future changes were investigated by analyzing the multi-model ensemble (MME) of the bias-corrected dataset during 2025–2044 (near-term), 2045–2064 (mid-term), and 2081–2100 (long-term) periods, with reference to the baseline period 1995–2014, under three integrated scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5) of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). Results show that: (1) the biases in CMIP6 GCMs can be effectively corrected by EQM, and the MME performs better than individual models for each climatic variable. (2) Precipitation over the YRB from 2025 to 2100 is projected to increase at the rate of 9.66 mm/decade, 13.45 mm/decade, and 21.01 mm/decade under SSP1‐2.6, SSP2‐4.5, and SSP5‐8.5, respectively. In the long-term, the annual precipitation is projected to increase by 10.41%, 10.66% and 15.80%, under SSP1‐2.6, SSP2‐4.5 and SSP5‐8.5, respectively. (3) T max (T min) over the YRB is projected to increase by 0.09 (0.07) °C/decade, 0.29 (0.27) °C/decade, and 0.66 (0.64) °C/decade under SSP1‐2.6, SSP2‐4.5, and SSP5‐8.5, respectively. In the long-term, T max (T min) averaged over the YRB is projected to increase by 1.75 (1.50) °C, 2.72 (2.54) °C and 5.04 (4.85) °C under SSP1‐2.6, SSP2‐4.5 and SSP5‐8.5, respectively. (4) Uncertainties in the projected precipitation and temperature over the YRB were reduced based on MME. But further researches, such as selecting the superior models with respect to the regional climate of the YRB from the CMIP6 and using the ensemble methods that assign weight based on the performance of each model, are still needed to provide more reliable climate projections. • Projected changes were explored by 23 CMIP6 GCMs under the three SSP-RCP scenarios. • Biases in the GCMs were corrected by Empirical Quantile Mapping (EQM) method. • Multi-model ensemble (MME) was used to reduce the uncertainties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vegetation and land-surface hydrology are intrinsically linked under long-term climate change. This paper aims to evaluate the dynamics of potential natural vegetation arising from 21st century climate change and its possible impact on the water budget of the Hanjiang River basin in China. Based on predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (IPCC-SRES) A1 scenario from the PRECIS (Providing Regional Climates for Impact Studies) regional climate model, changes in plant functional types (PFTs) and leaf area index (LAI) were simulated via the Lund-Potsdam-Jena dynamic global vegetation model. Subsequently, predicted PFTs and LAIs were employed in the Xinanjiang vegetation-hydrology model for rainfall-runoff simulations. Results reveal that future long-term changes in precipitation, air temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration would remarkably affect the spatiotemporal distribution of PFTS and LAIS. These climate-driven vegetation changes would further influence regional water balance. With the decrease in forest cover in the 21st century, plant transpiration and evaporative loss of intercepted canopy water will tend to fall while soil evaporation may rise considerably. As a result, total evapotranspiration may increase moderately with a slight increase in annual runoff depth. This indicates that, for long-term hydrological prediction, climate-induced changes in terrestrial vegetation cannot be neglected as the terrestrial biosphere plays an important role in land-surface hydrological responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linking sinuosity, a fairly recently developed metric, with high temperature extremes (HTEs) can be both useful and insightful to better understand the physical mechanisms behind HTEs. However, it is not clear whether there exists a relationship between the sinuosity changes and HTE changes in present and future climate conditions over southeastern China. In this paper, the anomalous characteristics of the atmospheric circulation are quantified by sinuosity. Three sinuosity metrics are used in this study: individual sinuosity (SIN), aggregate sinuosity (ASIN), and comprehensive sinuosity (CSIN). Furthermore, we examine the relationship between sinuosity changes and HTE changes in present and future climate conditions. ASIN is strongly correlated with surface air temperature (SAT). We find that the influence of individual sinuosity (SIN) at different latitudes on the SAT of southeastern China is different. The SIN of low (middle) latitude isohypses has significant positive (negative) correlations with the SAT of southeastern China. The SIN of high-latitude isohypses is rather limited and can therefore be ignored. The projected relationship between the sinuosity changes and HTE changes in the late 21st century suggests similar results. The change in SAT is related to the changes in climate variables over southeastern China in the future, and these changes increase with the increase in Z500 or V850 and the decrease in U500. Moreover, the frequencies of large (small) comprehensive sinuosity (CSIN) values at low (mid) latitudes will increase. At the end of the 21st century, Z500 isohypses at different latitudes will have an obvious poleward shift. Our results indicate that measuring the aggregate waviness of the midtropospheric flow (via sinuosity) can provide insight regarding HTEs, and the climate model output can be used to examine the future likelihood of increased HTE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines variations of the surface air temperature (SAT) over China and the globe in the twentieth century simulated by 19 coupled climate models driven by historical natural and anthropogenic forcings. Most models perform well in simulating both the global and the Northern Hemispheric mean SAT evolutions of the twentieth century. The inclusion of natural forcings improves the simulation, in particular for the first half of the century. The reproducibility of the SAT averaged over China is lower than that of the global and hemispheric averages, but it is still acceptable. The contribution of natural forcings to the SAT over China in the first half of the century is not as robust as that to the global and hemispheric averages. No model could successfully produce the reconstructed warming over China in the 1920s. The prescribed natural and anthropogenic forcings in the coupled climate models mainly produce the warming trends and the decadal- to interdecadal-scale SAT variations with poor performances at shorter time scales. The prominent warming trend in the last half of the century over China and its acceleration in recent decades are weakly simulated. There are discrepancies between the simulated and observed regional features of the SAT trend over China. Few models could produce the summertime cooling over the middle part of eastern China (27°–36°N), while two models acceptably produce the meridional gradients of the wintertime warming trends, with north China experiencing larger warming. Limitations of the current state-of-the-art coupled climate models in simulating spatial patterns of the twentieth-century SAT over China cast a shadow upon their capability toward projecting credible geographical distributions of future climate change through Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenario simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, future drought characteristics (frequency, duration and intensity) over China are analysed by using four climate models from CMIP6 under the seven SSP-RCP (shared socioeconomic pathway-representative concentration pathway) scenarios (SSP119, SSP126, SSP434, SSP245, SSP460, SSP370, and SSP585) for three defined periods of 2021–2040 (near-term), 2041–2060 (mid-term) and 2081–2100 (long-term). The corresponding four climate models output from CMIP5 are also used to conduct a comparison analysis between CMIP5 and CMIP6 to address the improvements added to CMIP6 in terms of drought identification. The drought characteristics are identified by applying the standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index (SPEI) at a 12-month timescale and run theory. The results show that CMIP6 has a robust capability to capture historical (1986–2005) drought characteristics. For the future period of 2021–2040, the decrease in precipitation and increase in potential evapotranspiration will lead to continuous dry conditions in the upper and middle Yangtze River basin and eastern Pearl River basin. Relative to the reference period, drought events will be more frequent and severe with longer durations in the Northwest River basins and middle Yangtze River basin. Furthermore, higher emissions signify a greater increase in drought frequency and intensity in the long-term period. Except for the SSP585 scenario, the lower emission scenario corresponds to the higher drought duration soon and in the mid-21st century (2021–2060). This finding is regarded as a "strange phenomenon", which cannot be detected by the previous CMIP5-based emission scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and the unlikely pathway RCP8.5). Therefore, additional "possible future"-based scenarios (SSP119, SSP126, SSP434, SSP245, SSP460, and SSP370) should be included in extreme climate studies, especially for the near future and mid-21st century. Notably, compared with CMIP5, the reduced biases in drought characteristics are more likely associated with improvements in the representation of physical processes in climate models from CMIP6. The results of this study could provide a basis for the development of drought adaptation measures over China. • Latest CMIP6 climate models and seven SSP-RCP scenarios are used to analyze the possible changes in droughts over China. • More robust projections will be presented by CMIP6 than CMIP5, due to the better representations in physical processes. • The higher emission signifies shorter drought duration, lower precipitation and PET in mid-21st century over China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]