Updates from the CORDEX South-Asia (obo R. Krishnan) J. Sanjay

1. CORDEX Science Advisory Team 1st Session 16-17 May 2014 ICTP, Trieste, Italy Updates from the CORDEX South-Asia (obo R. Krishnan) J. Sanjay Centre for Climate Change Research (CCCR) Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, INDIA Email: sanjay@tropmet.res.in

2. Highlights CORDEX South Asia • WCRP CORDEX South Asia Planning Meeting in partnership with WCRP-WMO, ADB, START, ICTP, CSAG , SMHI & CCCR-IITM was hosted by IITM, Pune, India, 25 – 26 February 2012 • CORDEX South Asia Regional Climate Model Simulation Experiments • CCCR-IITM Lead Role in generation, hosting and dissemination of CORDEX South Asia outputs (Coordinator – Dr. R. Krishnan) • Hosting of Earth System Grid (ESG) data nodes at CCCR-IITM

3. Highlights CORDEX South Asia • The 1st WCRP CORDEX South Asia Training Workshop in partnership with CCCR-IITM, START, ICTP, CSAG, SMHI and ICSU-ROAP was held at IITM, Pune, India, 17–20 October 2012 • The four day training workshop focused on skill development in analysis and verification results from the CORDEX Climate models. This capacity building effort helped to foster trans–disciplinary collaborations between individuals from the physical sciences and the VIA research community. • Integrating and delivering scientific data services to the CORDEX-South Asia community • Archived CCCR-IITM RCM runs (IITM-LMDz, IITM-RegCM4) in CORDEX specified format • The Integrated Rule-Oriented Data System (iRODS) is implemented in the CCCR-IITM Climate Data Portal for managing and sharing CORDEX data • CORDEX South Asia data (50km) is released by CCCR-IITM: • http://cccr.tropmet.res.in/cordex/files/downloads.jsp • Collaboration with NASA JPL RCMES (Regional Climate Model Evaluation System) team for implementing RCMES as a tool for evaluating CORDEX South Asia RCMs

4. Highlights CORDEX South Asia • The 2nd WCRP CORDEX Science and Training Workshop in South AsiaIn partnership with WCRP-CORDEX, MAIRS, APN, ICIMOD, CCCR-IITM & IAP was hosted by ICIMOD, Kathmandu, Nepal, 27 – 30 August 2013 • This workshop helped in improving the communication between end users needs and climate modeling communities to strengthen the regional climate knowledge. • International Conference on Regional Climate – CORDEX 2013 in partnership between WCRP, the European Commission and IPCC 4 – 7 November, 2013 Brussels, Belgium • Attendance: 500+ participants from 97 countries, South-Asian participation was co-ordinated by IITM • Great opportunity for Asian-Pacific attendees to meet with their peers and the wider CORDEX network • Presented preliminary results from CORDEX South Asia RCMs

5. Spatial pattern correlations and Standardized deviations of the simulated annual mean precipitation and surface air temperature climatology (1990-2004) with respect to the observed (CRU) data over the South Asia land region (60oE-100oE; 5oN-35oN) 10 CMIP5 AOGCMs (C1-C10; green triangles), 6 RCMs driven with ERAI (E1-E6; blue squares), 5 RCMs driven with CMIP5 (H1-H5; red circles). The CM, EM, HM and EI denote their ensemble means and ERAI respectively. Sanjay et al. (http://cordex2013.wcrp-climate.org/posters/P3_27_Sanjay.pdf)

6. Highlights CORDEX South Asia • Future Plans • Strengthen dissemination of CORDEX-South Asia Multi-Model outputs from • RCP4.5 scenario (2006- 2100) • Participation as a Earth System Grid (ESG) node for publishing CORDEX products • Multi-model evaluation system: e.g., Regional Climate Model Evaluation System (RCMES) • Co-ordination of CORDEX training planned in 2014 (East Asia) & 2015 (Southeast Asia) • Develop synergistic linkage between climate downscaling & VIA user communities in Asia e.g., CARIAA

7. 16/May/2014: R. Krishnan Inputs for "Metrics for regional targeted assessment" for the South Asian region, the important components for targeted climate assessments are: 1) Southwest Monsoon (June - September): In addition to mean and variability of rainfall, metrics need to be developed for diagnosis of monsoon circulation (eg. Low-level winds,  upper level tropical easterly jet), vertical distribution of vorticity, divergence and specific humidity over the Indo-Gangetic plains, monsoon lows and depressions, active / break monsoon conditions, intraseasonal variations in monsoon rainfall and circulation. Majority of CMIP5 models underestimate mean monsoon rainfall over the Indo-Gangetic plains. I think this is partly due to poor representation of west-northwest moving monsoon synoptic systems in the CMIP5 models. If CORDEX models can improve this issue, it will be a real value addition. 2) Tropical cyclones (post-monsoon and pre-monsoon season): A systematic assessment of TCs over the North Indian Ocean and their response to climate change using CORDEX multi-models will be useful information.

8. 3) Western disturbances: There is great potential from CORDEX models to understand how Western Disturbances (WDs) might respond to climate change. Unlike monsoon synoptic disturbances, WDs are more predictable because of their similarity to mid-latitude baroclinic systems. Since CORDEX models use high-resolution, they provide important information about rainfall and temperature variations over the Himalayan Hindu-Kush region associated with WDs. A student working on this problem (Climate Dynamics online). This work was based on observations and reanalysis data. We intend to examine CORDEX models for this study as well. Personally, I am not comfortable with the idea of prescriptive "Metrics" in the monsoon region for two reasons (a) Understanding of monsoon dynamics and variability is not mature enough for targeted evaluations (b) This idea also restricts one from understanding the real monsoon, because efforts tend to focus mainly on evaluating model performance rather than the actual phenomena.Given the requirements of model evaluation for CORDEX, I feel we should suggest evaluation of simple and straight forward "Metrics" in the South Asian region - which is easy for everyone to adopt.