Author(s)

Robert Oglesby¹, Clinton Rowe¹, Alfred Grunwaldt², Ines Ferreira², Franklyn Ruiz³, Jayaka Campbell⁴, Luis Alvarado⁵, Francisco Argenal⁶, Berta Olmedo⁷, Alejandro del Castillo⁸, Pilar Lopez⁹, Edwards Matos⁶, Yosef Nava¹⁰, Carlos Perez¹¹, Joel Perez⁸

¹Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, USA.
²Climate Change and Sustainability Division, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington DC, USA.
³Instituto de Hidrología, Meteorología y Estudios Ambientales de Colombia, Bogota, Colombia.
⁴University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica.
⁵Instituto Meteorológico Nacional Costa Rica, San Jose, Costa Rica.
⁶Servicio Meteorológico Nacional de Honduras Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil, Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
⁷Empresa de Transmisión Eléctrica Paname?a, Ciudad de Panamá, Panamá.
⁸Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean (CATHALAC), Ciudad de Panamá, Panamá.
⁹Unidad de Análisis Meteorológico, Empresa de Transmisión Eléctrica Paname?a, Ciudad de Panamá, Panamá.
¹⁰Instituto Nacional de Ecología y Cambio Climático, Mexico City, Mexico.
¹¹National Weather Service, MARN, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Mesoamerica and the Caribbean are low-latitude regions at risk for the effects of climate change. Global climate models provide large-scale assessment of climate drivers, but, at a horizontal resolution of 100 km, cannot resolve the effects of topography and land use as they impact the local temperature and precipitation that are keys to climate impacts. We developed a robust dynamical downscaling strategy that used the WRF regional climate model to downscale at 4 - 12 km resolution GCM results. Model verification demonstrates the need for such resolution of topography in order to properly simulate temperatures. Precipitation is more difficult to evaluate, being highly variable in time and space. Overall, a 36 km resolution is inadequate; 12 km appears reasonable, especially in regions of low topography, but the 4 km resolution provides the best match with observations. This represents a tradeoff between model resolution and the computational effort needed to make simulations. A key goal is to provide climate change specialists in each country with the information they need to evaluate possible future climate change impacts.

Regional Climate Models, Dynamical Downscaling Strategy, Mesoamerica and Caribbean Climate Change

Oglesby, R. , Rowe, C. , Grunwaldt, A. , Ferreira, I. , Ruiz, F. , Campbell, J. , Alvarado, L. , Argenal, F. , Olmedo, B. , del Castillo, A. , Lopez, P. , Matos, E. , Nava, Y. , Perez, C. and Perez, J. (2016) A High-Resolution Modeling Strategy to Assess Impacts of Climate Change for Mesoamerica and the Caribbean. American Journal of Climate Change, 5, 202-228. doi: 10.4236/ajcc.2016.52019.