Abstract:

The capabilities of the latest global climate models in simulating surface air temperatures in China have been assessed from the observed dataset and outputs from 29 models that participate in the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Inter Comparison Project (CMIP5). Based on the CMIP5 results, the surface air temperature changes in the 21st century are analyzed. The results show that the 29 CMIP5 models well simulated the significant rise trend, temporal evolution and spatial distribution of the annual mean temperature over China. The root mean square errors show that the multi-model ensemble mean shows better performance on various time scales than a single model. The capabilities of the 7 models are comparable to those of the others models have relatively better performances among them. The projection results are consistent between the different emission scenarios and models in the early stage of the 21st century. However the projected temperature becomes more sensitive to the scenarios and models since mid of the 21st century.

Key words: global climate model, CMIP5, surface air temperature, RCPs scenarios