Assessment of Climate Change over South America under RCP 4.5 and 8.5 Downscaling Scenarios

Sin Chan Chou^1*, André Lyra¹, Caroline Mourão¹, Claudine Dereczynski², Isabel Pilotto¹, Jorge Gomes¹, Josiane Bustamante¹, Priscila Tavares¹, Adan Silva¹, Daniela Rodrigues¹, Diego Campos¹, Diego Chagas¹, Gustavo Sueiro¹, Gracielle Siqueira¹, José Marengo³

¹National Institute for Space Research, Cachoeira Paulista, Brazil.
²Department of Meteorology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
³National Center for Natural Disaster Monitoring and Warning, Sao José dos Campos, Brazil.

DOI: 10.4236/ajcc.2014.35043                

Abstract

Four sets of downscaling simulations based on the Eta Regional Climate Model forced by two global climate models, the HadGEM2-ES and the MIROC5, and two RCP scenarios—8.5 and 4.5, have been carried out. The objective of this work is to assess the climate change over South America based on the Eta simulations. The future changes are shown in timeslices of 30 years: 2011-2040; 2041-2070 and 2071-2100. The climate change response of the Eta simulations nested in HadGEM2-ES is larger than the Eta nested in MIROC5. Major warming area is located in the central part of Brazil. In austral summer, the reduction of precipitation in the central part and the increase in the southeastern part of the continent are common changes in these simulations, while the EtaHadGEM2-ES intensifies the decrease of precipitation in central Brazil, the Eta-MIROC5 expands the area of increase of precipitation in southern Brazil toward the end of the century. In austral winter, precipitation decrease is found in the northern part of South America and in most of Central America, whereas the reduction in southeastern South America is limited to near coastal region. The time series of temperatures show that warming trends are larger in the Eta-HadGEM2-ES than in the Eta-MIROC5 simulations. Heavier precipitation rates are projected in the Central-South of Brazil toward the end of the century. Increase in the length of consecutive dry days (CDD) in Northeast of Brazil and the decrease of consecutive wet days (CWD) in the Amazon region are common features in these simulations.

Keywords

South America, Climate Downscaling, Climate Change Assessment, Climatic Extreme Indicators, Eta Model

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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