Acta Geographica Sinica ›› 2017, Vol. 72 ›› Issue (9): 1555-1568.

• Orginal Article •

### Ensemble projection of climate change scenarios of China in the 21st century based on the preferred climate models

Xuezhen ZHANG1(), Xiaxiang LI2, Xinchuang XU3(), Lijuan ZHANG2

1. 1. Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China
2. Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Monitoring of Geographic Environment, College of Heilongjiang Province, Harbin Normal University, Harbin 150025, China
3. The School of Resources Environment Science and Technology, Hubei University of Science and Technology, Xianning 437100, Hubei, China
• Received:2017-05-10 Revised:2016-07-18 Online:2017-09-30 Published:2017-10-12
• Supported by:
National Key Research and Development Program of China, No.2017YFA0605303;National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.91325302, No.41471171;Outstanding Young Scholars from IGSNRR, No.2015RC101;Youth Innovation Promotion Association of CAS, No.2015038;Key Fund of Humanities and Social Science of Hubei Provincial Education Department, No.16D094

Abstract:

Projection of future climate change scenarios provides the scientific basis for addressing climate change and for proposing strategies of adapting climate change. This study used the simulation data of 30 climate models, which were evolved in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). Through evaluating the performance of each model on simulating the historical climate change, the preferred climate models were selected. Then, using the outputs of preferred climate models as independent variables and using ground measurements as dependent variables, the partial least squares regression (PLS) models were constructed for temperature and precipitation, respectively, of each region of China. By analyzing the ensemble predictions of regional temperature and precipitation changes, we found that the PLS ensemble mean of preferred climate models is closer to the ground measurements than the PLS ensemble mean of all of the climate models and the traditionally arithmetic average-based ensemble mean. The PLS ensemble projections of preferred climate model showed that climate warming would generally continue during the 21st century, which would be stronger in the cold half-year and in the northern regions than that in the warm half-year and in the southern regions. Under the scenario of RCP 4.5, the climate warming would be stronger in the first half of the 21st century and weaker in the second half. Under the scenario of RCP 8.5, the climate warming would keep nearly constant rate and, by the end of 21st century, the temperature would rise by two folds of that under the scenario of RCP 4.5. The increasing trend of precipitation would be stronger under the scenario of RCP 8.5 than that under the scenario of RCP 4.5 and would be stronger in the dry regions than that in the rainy regions with decadal oscillations. Finally, the equal weighting ensemble projections of all of the climate models exhibit that climate warming would be stronger in summer than in winter and that precipitation would increase linearly without decadal oscillations. These findings are opposite to the primary characters of climate changes that climate warming is stronger in winter than in summer and precipitation has strong inter-decadal variability. Thereby, the PSL-based ensemble mean of preferred climate model may provide reasonable projections of future temperature and precipitation changes.