UMBC High Performance Computing Facility
Dynamical Downscaling of CMIP5 Multi-Model Climate
Information
Amita Mehta, Joint Center for Earth Systems technology (JCET)
Andrew Raim, Department of Mathematics and Statistics
It is recognized that to assess regional climate variability and change impacts
on a variety of socio-economic fields, including agriculture, water resources,
energy, and health; there is a need for climate information at the levels of
individual sites and localities. The current climate models, however, typically
have spatial resolution ranging from 10,000 to 50,000 km2. The present project
is designed to conduct dynamical downscaling of Coupled Model Inter-comparison
Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) multi-model output to high-resolution,
location-specific climate information. This task is accomplished by using the
University of Wisconsin Non-hydrostatic Modeling System (UWNMS) cloud-resolving
model. The UWNMS model is nested within climate model outputs representing
various phases of climate variability and change to obtained climate variables
at 2 to 10 Km resolution. The downscaled information will be used by a number
of collaborators in a variety of hydrological and agricultural applications.