2 CO 2 Eastern Asia regional responses in the RSM / CCM 3 modeling system

A global to regional modeling system has been developed to evaluate precipitation under doubled CO2. The National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) regional spectral model (RSM) is initialized and forced by current and doubled CO2 simulations from the NCAR community climate model (CCM3). Three RSM simulations, RSM0, RSM1, and RSM2, with resolution of 280, 50 and 15 km, are examined. The RSM0 setup resolution matches the T42 CCM3 simulations. The RSM2 simulation is centered over Taiwan. Due to incompatibility of the model physics, noticeable differences between RSM0 and CCM3 are found, especially in wintertime, which suggests that simulation from RSM0, rather than CCM3, should be used to contrast high-resolution regional variations produced by RSM1 or RSM2 simulations. While the spatial distributions of RSM1 and RSM2 simulations over Taiwan are greatly improved over the CCM3 simulation, the intensity of the unique wintertime drizzle is overestimated, especially in RSM2. There is also a spurious northward extension of the precipitation pattern from the subtropical warm-pool region. Thus the regional response to doubled CO2, which consists of more summerlike wintertime precipitation characteristics over the northeastern and eastern sides of Taiwan, with increased intensity mostly in the extreme events, is still in doubt and must be examined with improved global and regional models. D 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.