Future climate change scenarios in Central America at high spatial resolution
Open accessAbstract
The objective of this work is to assess the downscaling projections of climate change over Central America at 8-km resolution using the Eta Regional Climate Model, driven by the HadGEM2-ES simulations of RCP4.5 emission scenario. The narrow characteristic of continent supports the use of numerical simulations at very high-horizontal resolution. Prior to assessing climate change, the 30-year baseline period 1961-1990 is evaluated against different sources of observations of precipitation and temperature. The mean seasonal precipitation and temperature distribution show reasonable agreement with observations. Spatial correlation of the Eta, 8-km resolution, simulations against observations show clear advantage over the driver coarse global model simulations. Seasonal cycle of precipitation confirms the added value of the Eta at 8-km over coarser resolution simulations. The Eta simulations show a systematic cold bias in the region. Climate features of the Mid-Summer Drought and the Caribbean Low-Level Jet are well simulated by the Eta model at 8-km resolution. The assessment of the future climate change is based on the 30-year period 2021-2050, under RCP4.5 scenario. Precipitation is generally reduced, in particular during the JJA and SON, the rainy season. Warming is expected over the region, but stronger in the northern portion of the continent. The Mid-Summer Drought may develop in regions that do not occur during the baseline period, and where it occurs the strength may increase in the future scenario. The Caribbean Low-Level Jet shows little change in the future. Extreme temperatures have positive trend within the period 2021-2050, whereas extreme precipitation, measured by R50mm and R90p, shows positive trend in the eastern coast, around Costa Rica, and negative trends in the northern part of the continent. Negative trend in the duration of dry spell, which is an estimate based on evapotranspiration, is projected in most part of the continent. Annual mean water excess has negative trends in most part of the continent, which suggests decreasing water availability in the future scenario.
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The 2013 IPCC report forecasts that, by the late twenty-first century, intense heat and dryness will affect countries extending across North Africa into Egypt and Sudan and northeast to Saudi Arabia, the Levant including Syria, Iraq, and Iran, to parts of India and China in Asia, and across the Southern United States and Mexico.
“The 2013 IPCC report forecasts that, by the late twenty-first century, intense heat and dryness will affect countries extending across North Africa into Egypt and Sudan and northeast to Saudi Arabia, the Levant including Syria, Iraq, and Iran [20], to parts of India and China in Asia, and across the Southern United States and Mexico [21–23].”
From Climate Change, Migration, and Civil Strife. (2020) · cites this paper as [22]
The Results > Projections section (page unavailable) reports increasing extreme temperatures in Central America during 2021–2050 and notes an end-of-century drier signal over northern Central America. It does not project intense heat and dryness across the Southern United States and Mexico by the late twenty-first century, or address the other regions listed in the sentence. The paper cites the 2013 IPCC report but does not attribute that geographic forecast to it. (LLM, conf=0.83)
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Climate Change, Migration, and Civil Strife.
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- Authors
- Imbach, P., Chou, S. C., Lyra, A., Rodrigues, D., Rodriguez, D., Latinovic, D., Siqueira, G., Silva, A., Garofolo, L., & Georgiou, S.
- Affiliations
- Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Ensenanza Catie (CR)
- Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (BR)
- Corresponding author
- Imbach, Pablo
- Venue
- PLOS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2018-04-25
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- e0193570
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5919078
- OpenAlex
- W2802722930
- Cited by
- 103
- References
- 45
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 28 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 4
- FWCI
- 6.88
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- CGSPace A Repository of Agricultural Research Outputs (Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Biblioteca Digital da Memória Científica do INPE (National Institute for Space Research) (submittedVersion)
- Greater South Information System
- Funders
- International Development Research Centre
- Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico
- Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate Change and Environmental Impact
- Keywords
- climate change projections, dynamical downscaling, Eta regional climate model, HadGEM2-ES, RCP4.5, high spatial resolution, Central America, precipitation trends, temperature trends, mid-summer drought, Caribbean low-level jet, heavy rainfall, dry spell length, water availability, evapotranspiration, seasonal cycle
- MeSH terms
- Central America, Environmental Monitoring, Models, Theoretical, Seasons, Temperature, Climate Change
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