Projected Changes and Time of Emergence of Temperature Extremes over
Australia in CMIP5 and CMIP6
Abstract
This study focuses on the projections and time of emergence (TOE) for
temperature extremes over Australian regions in the phase 6 of Coupled
Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) models. The model outputs are
based on the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) from the Tier 1
experiments (i.e., SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5) in the
Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP), which is compared
with the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) in CMIP5 (i.e.,
RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). Furthermore, two large ensembles (LEs) in
CMIP6 are used to investigate the effects of internal variability on the
projected changes and TOE. As shown in the temporal evolution and
spatial distribution, the strongest warming levels are projected under
the highest future scenario and the changes for some extremes follow a
“warm-get-warmer” pattern over Australia. Over subregions, tropical
Australia usually shows the highest warming. Compared to the RCPs in
CMIP5, the multi-model medians in SSPs are higher for some indices and
commonly exhibit wider spreads, likely related to the different forcings
and higher climate sensitivity in a subset of the CMIP6 models. Based on
a signal-to-noise framework, we confirm that the emergence patterns
differ greatly for different extreme indices and the large uncertainty
in TOE can result from the inter-model ranges of both signal and noise,
for which internal variability contributes to the determination of the
signal. We further demonstrate that the internally-generated variations
influence the noise. Our findings can provide useful information for
mitigation strategies and adaptation planning over Australia.