Abstract - RMIP

 

Fu, C. B., S. Y. Wang, Z. Xiong, W. J. Gutowski, D. K. Lee, J.McGregor, Y.Sato, H. Kato, J.-W. Kim, M.-S. Su, 2003: Regional Climate Model Intercomparison Project for Asia (RMIP). Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. (submitted).

Improving the simulation of regional climate change is one of the high priority areas of climate study because regional information is needed for climate-change impacts assessments. Such information is especially important for the region covered by the East Asian monsoon, which has a large and rapidly growing population and substantial ongoing economic development. To this end, the Regional Climate Model Intercomparison Project (RMIP) for Asia has been established to evaluate and improve regional climate model (RCM) simulations of monsoonal climate. RMIP operates under joint support of the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN), Global Change System for Analysis, Research and Training (START), the Chinese Academy of Sciences and several projects of participating nations. The project currently involves 10 research groups from Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and the United States, as well as scientists from India, Italy, Mongolia, North Korea and Russia.

RMIP has three simulation phases: April 1997 - September 1998 to cover a full annual cycle and extremes in monsoon behavior, January 1989 - December 1998 to examine simulated climatology, and a climate change scenario from global model output. This paper presents RMIP goals, implementation design, and initial results for the first phase.