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This paper evaluated and compared the performance of a statistical downscaling method and a dynamical downscaling method to simulate the spatial–temporal rainfall distribution. Outputs from RegCM4 Regional Climate Model (RCM) and the CanESM2 Atmosphere–Ocean General Circulation Model (AOGCM) were selected for the data scarce Gwadar‐Ormara basin, Pakistan. The evaluation was based on the climatological average and standard deviation for historic (1971–2000) and future (2041–2070) time periods under Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. The performance evaluation showed that statistical downscaling is preferred to simulate and project rainfall patterns in the study area. Additionally, the Statistical DownScaling Model (SDSM) showed low R2 values in calibration and validation of the simulations with respect to observed data for the historic period. Overall, SDSM generated satisfactory results in simulating the monthly rainfall cycle of the entire basin. In this study, RegCM4 showed large rainfall errors and missed one rainfall season in the historic period. This study also explored whether the grid‐based rainfall time series of the Asian Precipitation—Highly Resolved Observational Daily Integration Towards Evaluation (APHRODITE) dataset could be used to enlarge and complement the sample of in situ observed rainfall time series. A spatial correlogram was used for observed and APHRODITE rainfall data to assess the consistency between the two data sources, which resulted in rejecting APHRODITE data. For the future time period (2041–2070) under RCPs 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios, rainfall projections did not show significant difference for both downscaling approaches. This may relate to the driving model (CanESM2 AOGCM) and not necessarily suggests poor performance of downscaling; either statistical or dynamical. Hence, the study recommends evaluating a multi‐model ensemble including other GCMs and RCMs for the same area of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internal variability pertains to fluctuations originating from processes inherent to the climate component and their mutual interactions. On the other hand, forced variability delineates the influence of external boundary conditions on the physical climate system. A methodology is formulated to distinguish between internal and forced variability within the surface air temperature. The noise‐to‐noise approach is employed for training a neural network, drawing an analogy between internal variability and image noise. A large training data set is compiled using surface air temperature data spanning from 1901 to 2020, obtained from an ensemble of Atmosphere‐Ocean General Circulation Model simulations. The neural network utilized for training is a U‐Net, a widely adopted convolutional network primarily designed for image segmentation. To assess performance, comparisons are made between outputs from two single‐model initial‐condition large ensembles, the ensemble mean, and the U‐Net's predictions. The U‐Net reduces internal variability by a factor of four, although notable discrepancies are observed at the regional scale. While demonstrating effective filtering of the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the U‐Net encounters challenges in capturing the changes in the North Atlantic Ocean. This methodology holds potential for extension to other physical variables, facilitating insights into the climate change triggered by external forcings over the long term. Plain Language Summary: To anticipate future climate change, it is crucial to detect and understand the impacts of human activities. However, distinguishing the effects of anthropogenic forcing from natural climate variations in observational data is challenging. Natural climate variability, known as internal variability, arises from the chaotic nature of atmospheric and oceanic circulation, and from the interactions among the ocean, atmosphere, and land. Here, a novel approach is introduced to distinguish the changes caused by human activities from internal variability. It is applied to the surface air temperature evolution from 1901 to 2020. This method uses an artificial neural network designed to separate the internal from the human‐induced variability. An unprecedented number of climate model simulations are used, enabling precise estimation of human‐forced variability in these climate models. The spatio‐temporal variations are distinguished by applying a well‐known methodology previously used to remove noise from images. The method's performance is evaluated, revealing errors regarding the internal variability that are typically one‐fourth of the actual variations. Regions with important internal variability or with low agreement among models exhibit the largest errors. Overall, the skills are comparable to other existing approaches, but improvements are anticipated. Key Points: We present a new method to separate the forced and internal variability of the surface air temperatureWe utilize a U‐Net trained with global climate models outputs and implement a noise to noise methodology to eliminate internal variabilityThe results are assessed through the utilization of very large ensemble simulations of two distinct climate models [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the response to anthropogenic forcing in the GISS‐E2.1 climate models for the 21st century Shared Socioeconomic Pathways emission scenarios within the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). The experiments were performed using an updated and improved version of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) coupled general circulation model that includes two different versions for atmospheric composition: A non‐interactive version (NINT) with prescribed composition and a tuned aerosol indirect effect and the One‐Moment Aerosol model (OMA) version with fully interactive aerosols which includes a parameterized first indirect aerosol effect on clouds. The effective climate sensitivities are 3.0°C and 2.9°C for the NINT and OMA models, respectively. Each atmospheric version is coupled to two different ocean general circulation models: The GISS ocean model (E2.1‐G) and HYCOM (E2.1‐H). We describe the global mean responses for all future scenarios and spatial patterns of change for surface air temperature and precipitation for four of the marker scenarios: SSP1‐2.6, SSP2‐4.5, SSP4‐6.0, and SSP5‐8.5. By 2100, global mean warming ranges from 1.5°C to 5.2°C relative to 1,850–1,880 mean temperature. Two high‐mitigation scenarios SSP1‐1.9 and SSP1‐2.6 limit the surface warming to below 2°C by the end of the 21st century, except for the NINT E2.1‐H model that simulates 2.2°C of surface warming. For the high emission scenario SSP5‐8.5, the range is 4.6–5.2°C at 2100. Due to about 15% larger effective climate sensitivity and stronger transient climate response in both NINT and OMA CMIP6 models compared to CMIP5 versions, there is a stronger warming by 2100 in the SSP emission scenarios than in the comparable Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios in CMIP5. Changes in sea ice area are highly correlated to global mean surface air temperature anomalies and show steep declines in both hemispheres, with the largest sea ice area decreases occurring during September in the Northern Hemisphere in both E2.1‐G (−1.21 × 106 km2/°C) and E2.1‐H models (−0.94 × 106 km2/°C). Both coupled models project decreases in the Atlantic overturning stream function by 2100. The largest decrease of 56%–65% in the 21st century overturning stream function is produced in the warmest scenario SSP5‐8.5 in the E2.1‐G model, comparable to the reduction in the corresponding CMIP5 GISS‐E2 RCP8.5 simulation. Both low‐end scenarios SSP1‐1.9 and SSP1‐2.6 also simulate substantial reductions of the overturning (9%–37%) with slow recovery of about 10% by the end of the 21st century (relative to the maximum decrease at the middle of the 21st century). Plain Language Summary: The projections of future climate change are uncertain because they are dependent on different possible scenarios of human‐caused emissions and their interaction with natural forcings, internal climate variability, and inter‐model differences. This paper presents the results of the climate model of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, GISS‐E2.1, for the anthropogenically forced climate response for the twenty first century Shared Socioeconomic Pathways emission scenarios within the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). The sensitivity of the model response to different magnitudes of anthropogenic forcings in the twenty‐first‐century scenarios were performed using two different versions for the atmospheric composition and two different ocean general circulation models. Compared to CMIP5 GISS‐E2 versions, the CMIP6 GISS‐E2.1 climate model shows a stronger warming by 2100 in comparable scenarios due to larger effective climate sensitivity and transient climate response. Both climate models with two different ocean components project decreases in the Atlantic overturning stream function by 2100. Key Points: GISS E2.1 model with different configurations is used to carry out 134 Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) experimentsGISS‐E2.1 climate model shows a stronger warming by 2,100 in comparable Representative Concentration Pathway scenarios in CMIP5 due to larger effective climate sensitivity and stronger transient climate responseBoth coupled models, E2.1‐G and E2.1‐H, project decreases in the Atlantic overturning stream function by 2100 with the largest decrease in the warmest scenario SSP5‐8.5 in the E2.1‐G model [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current methods for climate change assessment ignore the significant differences in uncertainty in model projections of the two key constituents of drought, precipitation, and evapotranspiration. We present here a new basis for assessing future drought using climate model simulations that addresses this limitation. The new method estimates the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) in a two‐stage process. The first stage of our proposed approach is to derive the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) using reliable atmospheric variables, which are filtered with a wavelet‐based spectral transformation. This derived SPI is then converted to an equivalent SPEI by combining it with climate model evapotranspiration simulations. We assess the performance of our proposed approach across Australia. The consistency of general circulation model (GCM) drought projections, in terms of both frequency and severity, is improved using the derived SPI. Incorporating evapotranspiration further improves the consistency of the multiple GCMs and drought time scales. The proposed framework can also be generalized to other water resources applications, where the differences in GCM uncertainty for precipitation and evapotranspiration affect climate change impact assessments. Plain Language Summary: Drought is affected by both rainfall and evapotranspiration. Drought indices represent drought severity compared to normal conditions as a function of time. Some drought indices are based on rainfall alone and some use both rainfall and evapotranspiration in the calculations. To understand future drought risk, simulations from climate models are needed. Unfortunately, different climate models often disagree on amounts and patterns of rainfall in the future, the disagreement being considerably more on rainfall than for evapotranspiration. In this study, we attempt to reduce the impact of these differences by developing a new method to estimate future drought. We used a mathematical method known as wavelets to estimate drought indices based on rainfall. Evapotranspiration is then used directly from the climate model and combined with the rainfall based drought index to create one overall drought index. We used projections from multiple climate models to understand if our new method led to a greater agreement in how often and severe future droughts may be. Our results confirm that the new method offers greater consistency in drought projections for the future. Key Points: Current methods for projecting drought ignore differences in uncertainty between P and ET simulationsA new basis for projecting drought is proposed that explicitly accounts for relative uncertainty between P and ETOur results show that the new method offers greater consistency in drought projections for the future [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]