Regional Climate Change Scenarios over the United States Produced with a Nested Regional Climate Model

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Abstract
In this paper two continuous 3½-year-long climate simulations over the continental United States are discussed, one for present-day conditions and one for conditions under double carbon dioxide concentration, conducted with a limited area model (LAM) nested in a general circulation model (GCM). The models used are a version of the NCAR Community Climate Model (CCM) at rhomboidal 15 spectral resolution and the climate version of the NCAR/Penn State mesoscale model (MM4) at 60-km gridpoint spacing. For present-day conditions the model temperatures are within 1°–2°C of observations except over the Great Lakes region, where temperature is overpredicted by 4°–6°C. The CCM overpredicts precipitation throughout the continental United States (overall by about 60%) and especially over the West (by up to 300%). The nested MM4 overpredicts precipitation over the West but underpredicts it over the eastern United States. In addition, it produces a large amount of topographically and lake-induced sub-GCM grid-... Abstract In this paper two continuous 3½-year-long climate simulations over the continental United States are discussed, one for present-day conditions and one for conditions under double carbon dioxide concentration, conducted with a limited area model (LAM) nested in a general circulation model (GCM). The models used are a version of the NCAR Community Climate Model (CCM) at rhomboidal 15 spectral resolution and the climate version of the NCAR/Penn State mesoscale model (MM4) at 60-km gridpoint spacing. For present-day conditions the model temperatures are within 1°–2°C of observations except over the Great Lakes region, where temperature is overpredicted by 4°–6°C. The CCM overpredicts precipitation throughout the continental United States (overall by about 60%) and especially over the West (by up to 300%). The nested MM4 overpredicts precipitation over the West but underpredicts it over the eastern United States. In addition, it produces a large amount of topographically and lake-induced sub-GCM grid-...

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