Performance of GCMs and Climate Future Scenarios for Southeastern South America

M.BIDEGAIN; CAMILLONI, INÉS

Foz de Iguazú, Brasil

Conferencia; 8th International Conference on Southern Hemisphere Meteorology and Oceanography; 2006

There are not many studies concerning model evaluation and climate scenarios in South America and more specifically in Southeastern South America. Most studies are experiments comparing sea level pressure, surface air temperature and precipitation from the models against observed climate fields, trying to estimate regional performance of the control simulations (baseline climate scenarios). We assume that the models that better simulate the current regional climate in their control experiments are likely to be more reliable in their simulations of regional climate under changes of greenhouse gases concentrations. The present study is a component of two regional projects of Assessments of Impacts and Adaptations to Climate Change (AIACC), funded by GEF (Global Environmental Facility) in South America (LA32 and LA26), and describes the results of an intercomparison experiment in a region of Southeastern South America defined by the latitudes 20°S to 40°S and the longitudes 45W° to 65°W for six different GCMs. In order to evaluate the differences between the observed climate (sea-level pressure, temperature and precipitation) and the climate simulations, we selected six available runs using the IPCC SRES-A2 socioeconomic forcing scenarios.