Summary: Six global climate models (GCMs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase Five (CMIP5) were dynamically downscaled to 25-km grid spacing according to the representative concentration pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) scenario using the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) Regional Climate Model Version Four (RegCM4), interactively coupled to a 1D lake model to represent the Great Lakes. These GCMs include the Centre National de Recherches Meteorologiques Coupled Global Climate Model Version Five (CNRM-CM5), the Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate Version Five (MIROC5), the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace Coupled Model Version Five-Medium Resolution (IPSL-CM5-MR), the Meteorological Research Institute Coupled Global Climate Model Version Three (MRI-CGCM3), the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, Australia GCM (ACCESS1-0), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory model (GFDL-ESM2M). The complete downscaling dataset is roughly 30 TB in size, stored on University of Wisconsin-Madison servers. Here, we extracted a sub-region over the Northeast Climate Science Center domain for select surface variables alone. Only 20-year time chunks for 1980-1999, 2040-2059, and 2080-2099 are provided here. Contact Michael Notaro if you wish to access additional variables and/or regions.
Reference: Notaro, M., Y. Zhong, S. Vavrus, M. Schummer, L. Van Den Elsen, J. Coluccy, and C. Hoving, 2016: Projected influences of changes in weather severity on autumn-winter distributions of dabbling ducks in the Mississippi and Atlantic Flyways during the twenty-first century. Plos One, 11(12), e0167506.
Reference: Notaro, M., V. Bennington, and S. Vavrus, 2015a: Dynamically downscaled projections of lake-effect snow in the Great Lakes Basin. Journal of Climate, 28, 1661-1684.
Reference: The downscaling was funded by grants and contracts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/Climate Change Data and Detection, NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory [Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant], Michigan Department of Natural Resources (EPA grant), Northeast Climate Science Center (CSC), and National Science Foundation (NSF). We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups for producing and makign available their model output. For CMIP, the U.S. Department of Energy's Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals. Computational resources were provided through the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the Teragrid from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The dynamical downscaling of climate projections was performed by Drs. Val Bennington, Yafang Zhong, and Michael Notaro.