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Simulating extreme temperatures over Central Africa by RegCM4.4 regional climate model

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Abstract

Nowadays, extreme temperatures are associated with global warming and cause great concerns worldwide, particularly in Africa because of low resilience, adaptation and mitigation strategies. The present study investigates the performance of RegCM4 climate model in reproducing extreme temperatures over Central Africa (CA) during 2002–2006 period. Apart of daily minimum and maximum temperatures, the study uses six extreme temperature indices based on the recommendations of Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices. These include four intensity indices and two duration indices. Focus has been done in two sub-regions embedded over the study area for more specific analysis. The first sub-region named zone 1 is semi-arid while the second one named zone 2 is humid. We found that whatever the region or season over CA, RegCM4 displays fairly well the intensity indices associated to daily minimum temperatures, namely \(TN_{N}\) and \(TN_{X}\), with underestimations not exceeding \(4\,^{\circ }\)C. For intensity indices based on daily maximum temperatures, namely \(TX_{X}\) and \(TX_{N}\), the warm bias can reach up to \(10\,^{\circ }\)C. This model behavior is associated to its inability to depict surface downward solar and thermal fluxes as well as surface sensible heat flux. Regarding the duration indices, RegCM depicts the hot sequences with high biases, unlike the cold sequences. Statistical parameters used for evaluation show that despite the differences between model and ERA5, RegCM4 can be used to investigate extreme temperatures over the study region mainly if indices of interest are based on daily minimum temperatures and cold sequences.

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Data availability

RegCM4 input data are obtained at http://clima-dods.ictp.it/regcm4. Observation data can be downloaded in their respective website.

Code availability

This study used CDO (Climate Data Operators) and NCL (NCAR Command Language) softwares. CDO is a collection of several operators for climate model output processing whereas NCL is an open source interpreted language, designed specifically for scientific data visualization and processing. There are freely available at http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/cdo and http://www.ncl.ucar.edu, respectively.

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Acknowledgements

The authors express their sincere thanks to the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Italy, for providing the RegCM4 model. The second author is grateful to the ICTP for the Associate program. A special thanks to the four anonymous reviewers for their comments which improve the initial quality of the manuscript.

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The authors have not disclosed any funding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Environmental Modelling and Atmospheric Physics, Department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences, University of Yaounde 1, Yaounde, Cameroon

    P. Demeko Yemih, A. J. Komkoua Mbienda, G. M. Guenang, S. L. Matho Lontio, G. A. Teka Kue, D. A. Vondou & C. Mbane Biouele

  2. Laboratory for Environmental Physics, Department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences, University of Dschang, Dschang, Cameroon

    A. J. Komkoua Mbienda & G. M. Guenang

  3. Earth System Physics Section, The Abdus Salam ICTP, 34151, Trieste, Italy

    A. J. Komkoua Mbienda

Authors
  1. P. Demeko Yemih
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  2. A. J. Komkoua Mbienda
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  3. G. M. Guenang
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  4. S. L. Matho Lontio
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  5. G. A. Teka Kue
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  6. D. A. Vondou
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  7. C. Mbane Biouele
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Correspondence to A. J. Komkoua Mbienda.

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Demeko Yemih, P., Komkoua Mbienda, A.J., Guenang, G.M. et al. Simulating extreme temperatures over Central Africa by RegCM4.4 regional climate model. Clim Dyn 60, 2343–2363 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06458-z

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