Initial NARCliM evaluation.

NARCliM (NSW/ACT Regional Climate Modelling project) is a regional climate modeling project for the Australian area. It will provide a comprehensive dynamically downscaled climate dataset for the CORDEX-AustralAsia region at 50km, and South-East Australia at a resolution of 10km. NARCliM data will be used by the NSW and ACT governments to design their climate change adaptation plans.
NARCliM uses WRFv3.3 regional climate model (RCM) to perform an ensemble of simulations for the present and the projected future climate. WRF is run in three different model configurations (different combinations of physical parametrizations) that have been shown to perform well in the South-East Australia and were chosen based on performance and independence. These three RCMs are simulating three different periods: 1990-2009, 2020-2040 and 2060-2080. Four different GCMs (MIROC-medres 3.2, ECHAM5, CGCM 3.1 and CSIRO mk3.0) from CMIP3 will be used as initial and boundary conditions for the WRF simulations. These GCMs were chosen through a process that considered model performance, independence and projected future changes. Thus an ENSEMBLE of 12 simulations for each period will be obtained. Additionally to the GCM-driven simulations, 3 control run simulations driven by the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis for the entire period of 1950-2009 are also performed in order to validate the RCMs performance in the area. In this talk, we will present the initial evaluation results of the long control period simulations of the project. This includes an analysis of the models ability to capture the influence of large scale oceanic modes on the regional climate.

Figure 3: Correlation between SON precipitation and the El Niño Modoki Index. Only areas obtaining 95% significance or higher are coloured.