A spatiotemporal analysis of Indian warming target using CORDEX-SA experiment data.

It is important to estimate a high-resolution spatiotemporal distribution of temperature rise under climate change for effective adaptation and mitigation planning. This paper studies the threshold crossing time (TCT) for eight Indian warming targets (IWTs) between 1.5 and 5 °C based on regional climate models (RCMs) participating in The Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX)—South Asia project. To evaluate the performance of CORDEX experiments in simulating the near-surface mean temperature, the model performance index (MPI) is used which represents that the CanESM experiment performs best for simulating T_mean over India. All India average T_mean projected by the multi-model ensemble (MME) represents that 1.5 °C TCT is about 2033 ± 3 and 2028 ± 3 in RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, respectively. During the twenty-first century, Indian subcontinent can experience five IWTs (1.5–3.5 °C) under RCP4.5 and all eight under scenario RCP8.5. The fastest warming region in India is the western Himalayan region (North India) and north-west region (Indian Thar Desert). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]