83 / 2024-09-06 16:42:09

The impact of climate change on extreme weather events based on a high-resolution earth system model

High-resolution Earth system model; heat waves; atmospheric blocking; atmospheric rivers; extreme precipitation

Extreme weather events, such as heat waves, extreme precipitation have been frequently occurring and are projected to happen even more frequently under a warming climate. Understanding how the extreme weather events respond to a warming climate is critically important. Numerical models are important tools understanding the associated mechanisms, with one of the primary challenges lying in the spatial resolutions. With the aid of advanced supercomputers, we have recently achieved improvements in the development of high-resolution earth system models (HRESMs) based on community earth system model (CESM), e.g., the application of a series of HRESMs including models with 25 km atmosphere and 10 km ocean, up to 5 km atmosphere and 3 km ocean. Thorough comparisons between HRESMs and commonly used CMIPs (CMIP5, CMIP6), we find that HRESMs show substantial improvement in reproducing extreme weather events, greatly enhancing confidence of their future projections.