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China experienced major heat waves in summer 2013, being the worst the last 140 years in Eastern China. The RegCM-Chem4 climate-chemistry model was applied over China for the summer 2013 with a spatial resolution of 60 km and hourly temporal analysis. This study focuses on the examination of the RegCM-Chem4 performance in the simulation of ozone levels during two prolonged heat wave periods (24/07/2013–31/07/2013 and 07/08/2013–14/08/2013) and a non heat wave period (05/06/2013–12/06/2013) in Central and Eastern China. Near surface model results for ozone are compared with hourly observational data from 45 monitoring stations of the Chinese air quality network. The RegCM-Chem4 validation in the non-HW period presents good results. In August HW, the model underestimates the O3 values and variability, in line with RegCM-Chem4 temperature values underestimation in the same period, showing at almost all stations a performance that is not as good as that in the non-HW period. The performance of the model in the July HW requires further analysis; RegCM-Chem4 also underestimates the O3 levels and variability at almost all stations, however the model performance is not as good as that in the non-HW period only at a part of the AQ stations.

The heat waves (HWs) that hit Central and Eastern China in July and August 2013 brought record-breaking high temperatures. People died, water resources were depleted and regional power grids were strained. The aim of this paper was to assess the capability of RegCM4 model to predict temperature at 2 m above ground (T2m) and relative humidity (RH) values during the HWs that occurred in China in the summer 2013. T2m data recorded by 32 meteorological stations (MSs) distributed in the whole country were analyzed to identify HW events. Two 8-day periods were selected (24/7–31/7, 7/8–14/8), when the daily maximum hourly value (DMHV) of T2m continuously exceeded 35 °C. Additionally, an 8-day non HW period was selected (5/6–12/6) for comparison purposes. These prolonged HW events were occurred in Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shanghai Provinces, therefore data recorded by the MSs located in these Provinces were further exploited. Model’s results were evaluated against measurements by applying common statistical indices. RegCM4 showed generally sufficient performance in capturing the main characteristics of the HWs in summer 2013 at Central and Eastern China.