Regional climate modeling for the developing world: The ICTP RegCM3 and RegCNET

Jeremy Pal (1) , Filippo Giorgi (2) , Xunqiang Bi , Nellie Elguindi (3) , Fabien Solmon (3) , Xuejie Gao , Sara Rauscher , Raquel Francisco , Ashraf Zakey , Jonathan Winter , Moetasim Ashfaq , Faisal Syed , Jason Bell (4) , Noah Diffenbaugh (5) , Jagadish Karmacharya , Abourahamane Konaré , Daniel Martinez , Rosmeri Da Rocha , Lisa Sloan , Allison Steiner (6)

1 loyola marymount university
2 ICTP - Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics [Trieste]
3 LAERO - Laboratoire d'aérologie
4 SFU - Department of Mathematics [Burnaby]
5 Stanford University
6 AOSS - Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Sciences [Ann Arbor]

Regional climate models are important research tools available to scientists around the world, including in economically developing nations (EDNs). The Earth Systems Physics (ESP) group of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) maintains and distributes a state-of-the-science regional climate model called the ICTP Regional Climate Model version 3 (RegCM3), which is currently being used by a large research community for a diverse range of climate-related studies. The RegCM3 is the central, but not only, tool of the ICTP-maintained Regional Climate Research Network (RegCNET) aimed at creating south–south and north–south scientific interactions on the topic of climate and associated impacts research and modeling. In this paper, RegCNET, RegCM3, and illustrative results from RegCM3 benchmark simulations applied over south Asia, Africa, and South America are presented. It is shown that RegCM3 performs reasonably well over these regions and is therefore useful for climate studies in EDNs.

Domaines: Physique Atmosphérique et Océanique [physics.ao-ph]

Jeremy Pal, Filippo Giorgi, Xunqiang Bi, Nellie Elguindi, Fabien Solmon, et al.. Regional climate modeling for the developing world: The ICTP RegCM3 and RegCNET. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2007, 88 (9), pp.1395+. ⟨10.1175/BAMS-88-9-1395⟩. ⟨hal-00342318⟩