cloud-resolving climate modeling; climate change; hydrological cycle; atmospheric convection; Alps; water cycle; Europe; regional climate model; cloud-resolving convection
Giorgi F. C. Torma E. Coppola N. Ban C. Schär S. Somot (2016), Enhanced summer convective rainfall at Alpine high elevations in response to climate warming, in
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Schär C. N. Ban E.M. Fischer J. Rajczak J. Schmidli C. Frei F. Giorgi T.R. Karl E.J. Kendon (2016), Percentile indices for assessing changes in heavy precipitation events, in
Springer Verlag , 137(1), 201-216.
Ban Nikolina (2015), Heavy precipitation in a changing climate: Does short-term summer precipitation increase faster?, in
Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, 1165-1172.
Hassanzadeh H., J. Schmidli, W. Langhans, L. Schlemmer, C. Schär (2015), Impact of topography on the diurnal cycle of summertime moist convection in idealized simulations, in
Met. Z., 25(2), 181-194.
Ban Nikolina, Schmidli Juerg, Schaer Christoph (2014), Evaluation of the convection-resolving regional climate modeling approach in decade-long simulations, in
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-ATMOSPHERES, 119(13), 7889-7907.
Froidevaux Paul (2014), Influence of the background wind on the local soil moisture-precipitation feedback, in
J. Atmos. Sci., 71, 782-799.
Schmidli J. (2013), Daytime heat transfer processes over mountainous terrain, in
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Climate change is one of the most pressing social and economic issues currently facing humankind. The provision of accurate projections of future climate at regional scales, including changes in the hydrological cycle and the frequency and intensity of extreme events, is crucial for society. Yet, large uncertainties remain for European climate change scenarios, in particular during the summer season and for regions of complex topography such as the European Alps. Many of these uncertainties are related to aspects of the hydrological cycle at regional scales and its representation in global and regional climate models. Here we propose to develop a high-resolution cloud-resolving climate modeling capability and to use it to undertake a detailed study of hydrological cycle and its response to climate change in the greater Alpine region. The specific aims are (1) to develop a cloud-resolving regional climate modeling capability and thereby to provide an attractive tool for the investigation of regional-scale climate processes and feedbacks, (2) to improve the understanding of the water cycle at regional scales and the associated feedback processes relating to the European summer climate and their representation in regional climate models, (3) to apply the cloud-resolving climate model to the production of first cloud-resolving climate change scenario runs for the greater Alpine region, (4) to evaluate the cloud-resolving climate model against high-resolution observational datasets and to compare it to climate simulations using parameterized convection. Results from the study will be useful for an improved assessment of the hydrological cycle in the greater Alpine region and its response to climate change.The study is partitioned into two parts and designed to yield two self-contained PhD themes, each dedicated to specific goals. Part A is dedicated to conducting long-term climate simulations at cloud-resolving scales for current and future climates and to investigating the hydrological cycle in the greater Alpine region and its future changes. The simulations will be conducted with the non-hydrostatic compressible COSMO/CLM model for an extended Alpine domain at 2.2 km resolution. Part B is dedicated to the analysis of summertime moist convection over topography in an idealized context, in order to improve the understanding of the physical feedback processes relating to the European summer climate. The work will build on our groups expertise in regional climate modeling and extend previous case-study and process-oriented studies that have been conducted with cloud-resolving models.