Projections of twenty-first century climate over Europe

Abstract

We present an assessment of climate change pro jections over the European region for the 21st century from the ensembles of CMIP3 global model experiments and PRUDENCE regional climate model experiments. The A2, A1B, and B1 IPCC emission scenarios are considered. A brief review is also presented of the literature available on future European climate pro jections. In all emission scenarios the European region shows maximum warming of up to several degrees C over the Mediterranean region in summer and over northeastern Europe in winter. The precipitation change signal shows a north-south dipolar structure, with increasing precipitation over Northern Europe and decreasing over southern Europe. This structure migrates northward from the winter to the summer and is tied to the north-south motion of an increasing anticyclonic circulation cell over the North Atlantic-European sector. Temperature interannual variability decreases in winter over central and northern Europe and increases in summer throughout Europe. Precipitation interannual variability shows a predominant increase, most pronounced in summer. The seasonal temperature anomaly probability density functions (PDFs) show a shift and a widening and flattening in future climate conditions, especially in summer, which is indicative of pronounced increases of extreme hot seasons. The seasonal precipitation anomaly PDFs show pronounced changes over Southern Europe in summer, with a strong increase of very dry seasons. In general, the magnitude of future climate change increases with the greenhouse gas forcing. A broad consensus is found between the pro jections obtained with the CMIP3 and PRUDENCE ensembles, as well as between the present analysis and previous generations of model pro jections. The climate change signal over Europe exhibits a consistent latitudinal and seasonal evolution identified as the European Climate change Oscillation (ECO) by Giorgi and Coppola [F. Giorgi and E. Coppola, Geophys. Res. Lett. 34, L21703 (2007)]. The changes of temperature and precipitation over Europe are pronounced, making this region highly vulnerable to global warming.