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1.
人类活动对气候影响的研究Ⅱ.对东亚和中国气候变化的影响 总被引：21，自引：6，他引：15
系统总结和介绍了20世纪90年代以来作者所开展的有关人类活动对东亚和中国气候影响的一系列研究活动.其中包括温室气体辐射强迫及其气候效应,大气微量气体的全球增温潜能,对流层和平流层气溶胶的辐射气候效应,气候系统外部因子对中国气候影响的总体评估,人类活动对中国和东亚地区未来气候变化的影响,以及20世纪和21世纪东亚及中国的气候变化.同时给出了一系列研究成果,这些研究成果对于正确认识和准确预测东亚地区以及中国气候变化具有十分重要的意义. 相似文献
2.
Numerical Simulation of Global Temperature Change during the 20th Century with the IAP／LASG GOALS Model 总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1
The IAP/LASG GOALS coupled model is used to simulate the climate change during the 20th century using historical greenhouse gases concentrations, the mass mixing ratio of sulfate aerosols simulated by a CTM model, and reconstruction of solar variability spanning the period 1900 to 1997. Four simulations, including a control simulation and three forcing simulations, are conducted. Comparison with the observational record for the period indicates that the three forcing experiments simulate reasonable temporal and spatial distributions of the temperature change. The global warming during the 20th century is caused mainly by increasing greenhouse gas concentration especially since the late 1980s; sulfate aerosols offset a portion of the global warming and the reduction of global temperature is up to about 0.11℃ over the century; additionally, the effect of solar variability is not negligible in the simulation of climate change over the 20th century. 相似文献
3.
This paper applies the newest emission scenarios of the sulfur and greenhouse gases, namely IPCC SRES A2 and B2 scenarios, to investigate the change of the North China climate with an atmosphere-ocean coupled general circulation model. In the last three decades of the 21st century, the global warming enlarges the land-sea thermal contrast, and hence, causes the East Asian summer (winter) monsoon circulation to be strengthened (weakened). The rainfall seasonality strengthens and the summer precipitation increases significantly in North China. It is suggested that the East Asian rainy area would expand northward to North China in the last three decades of the 21st century. In addition, the North China precipitation would increase significantly in September. In July, August, and September, the interannual variability of the precipitation enlarges evidentlv over North China. implying a risk of flooding in the future. 相似文献
4.
M. James Salinger 《Climatic change》2005,70(1-2):9-29
Prior to the 20th century Northern Hemisphere average surface air temperatures have varied in the order of 0.5 °C back to AD 1000. Various climate reconstructions indicate that slow cooling took place until the beginning of the 20th century. Subsequently, global-average surface air temperature increased by about 0.6 °C with the 1990s being the warmest decade on record. The pattern of warming has been greatest over mid-latitude northern continents in the latter part of the century. At the same time the frequency of air frosts has decreased over many land areas, and there has been a drying in the tropics and sub-tropics. The late 20th century changes have been attributed to global warming because of increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activities. Underneath these trends is that of decadal scale variability in the Pacific basin at least induced by the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), which causes decadal changes in climate averages. On interannnual timescales El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) causes much variability throughout many tropical and subtropical regions and some mid-latitude areas. The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) provides climate perturbations over Europe and northern Africa. During the course of the 21st century global-average surface temperatures are very likely to increase by 2 to 4.5 °C as greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere increase. At the same time there will be changes in precipitation, and climate extremes such as hot days, heavy rainfall and drought are expected to increase in many areas. The combination of global warming, superimposed on decadal climate variability (IPO) and interannual fluctuations (ENSO, NAO) are expected lead to a century of increasing climate variability and change that will be unprecedented in the history of human settlement. Although the changes of the past and present have stressed food and fibre production at times, the 21st century changes will be extremely challenging to agriculture and forestry. 相似文献
5.
SST versus Climate Change Signals in West African Rainfall: 20th-Century Variations and Future Projections 总被引：1，自引：1，他引：1
Rainfall variability is a crucial factor in food production,water resource planning and ecosystems, especially in regions with scarce freshwaterresources. In West Africa rainfall has been subject to largedecadal and interdecadal variations during the 20th century. The most prominent feature is thereduction in rainfall amount throughout the second half of the century with somerecovery at the end. Among the conceivable mechanisms, which might inducesuch low-frequency variability in West African precipitation, this study isfocussed onsea surface temperature (SST) variations and increasing greenhouse gas (GHG)concentrations. A tool is presented to distinguish between both impacts bymeans of various climate model simulations, which are found to reproduce theobserved rainfall characteristics over West Africa reasonably well.Further, a multi-model approach is usedto evaluate the expected future greenhouse signal in West African rainfall with respect to natural variability and intermodel variations.It is found that observed SST fluctuations, forcing two different atmospheric climate models, are able to reproduce the main features ofobserved decadal rainfall anomalies in the southern part of West Africathroughout the second half of the 20th century. The seasonal response to varying SST isstrongest in summer when the region is undergoing intensive monsoondynamics. Whereas both atmospheric models simulate the observeddrought tendency,following the 1960s, there is some indication that the additional GHG forcing in one model inducessome significantly different rainfall anomalies in recent years, re-initiatingeven positive anomalies relative to the climatological mean which has alsobeen observed since the 1990s. However, thisresult is still subject to model uncertainty.Coupled climate model integrations with different climate change scenariosalsopredict that precipitation, particularly over the Guinea Coast and Sahelregion, will steadily increase into the 21st century. The model-comprehensive signal isstatistically significant with respect to natural variability and modeluncertainty, suggesting that the observed recovery of yearly rainfall overparts of West Africa might actually reflect the beginning impact of risinganthropogenic GHG. The physical mechanism, linking the radiative forcing tothe monsoonal rainfall, probably works via warming of the tropicalAtlantic Ocean. 相似文献
6.
气候变化的归因与预估模拟研究 总被引：14，自引：2，他引：12
本文总结了近五年来中国科学院大气物理研究所在气候变暖的归因模拟与预估研究上的主要进展。研究表明,利用海温、太阳辐射和温室气体等实际强迫因子驱动大气环流模式,能够较为合理地模拟全球平均地表气温在20世纪的演变,但是难以模拟出包括北大西洋涛动／北极涛动和南极涛动在内的高纬度环流的长期变化趋势。利用温室气体和硫酸盐气溶胶等“历史资料”驱动气候系统模式,能够较好地模拟出20世纪后期的全球增暖,但如果要再现20世纪前期(1940年代)的变暖,还需同时考虑太阳辐射等自然外强迫因子。20世纪中国气温演变的耦合模式模拟技巧,较之全球平均情况要低;中国气候在1920年代的变暖机理目前尚不清楚。对于近50年中国东部地区“南冷北暖”、“南涝北旱”的气候变化,基于大气环流模式特别是区域气候模式的数值试验表明,夏季硫酸盐气溶胶的负辐射效应超过了温室气体的增暖效应,从而对变冷产生贡献。但现有的数值模拟证据,不足以说明气溶胶增加对“南涝北旱”型降水异常有贡献。20世纪中期以来,青藏高原主体存在明显增温趋势,温室气体浓度的增加对这种增暖有显著贡献。多模式集合预估的未来气候变化表明,21世纪全球平均温度将继续增暖,增温幅度因不同排放情景而异;中国大陆年均表面气温的增暖与全球同步,但增幅在东北、西部和华中地区较大,冬季升温幅度高于夏季、日最低温度升幅要强于日最高温度;全球增暖有可能对我国中东部植被的地理分布产生影响。伴随温室气体增加所导致的夏季平均温度升高,极端温度事件增多;在更暖的气候背景下,中国大部分地区总降水将增多,极端降水强度加大且更频繁发生,极端降水占总降水的比例也将增大。全球增暖有可能令大洋热盐环流减弱,但是减弱的幅度因模式而异。全球增暖可能不是导致北太平洋副热带－热带经圈环流自20世纪70年代以来变弱的原因。文章同时指出了模式预估结果中存在的不确定性。 相似文献
7.
Jian Lu 《Climate Dynamics》2009,33(4):445-460
Given the pronounced warming in the Indian Ocean sea surface temperature (SST) during the second half of the twentieth century
and the empirical relationship between the Indian Ocean SST and Sahel summer precipitation, we investigate the mechanisms
underlying this relationship using the GFDL atmospheric model AM2.0 to simulate the equilibrium and transient response to
the warming of the Indian Ocean. Equatorial wave dynamics, in particular the westward propagating equatorial Rossby waves,
communicates the signal of tropospheric warming and stabilization from the Indian Ocean to the African continent. The stabilization
associated with the Rossby wave front acts to suppress the convection. Feedbacks with local precipitation and depletion of
moisture amplify the dynamically induced subsidence. While this stabilization mechanism is expected to operate in climate
change response, the future prospects for the Sahelian climate under global warming are complicated by the intricate sensitivities
to the SSTs from different ocean basins and to the direct radiative forcing of greenhouse gases. 相似文献
8.
Understanding the response of the global hydrological cycle to recent and future anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols is a major challenge for the climate modelling community. Recent climate scenarios produced for the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are analysed here to explore the geographical origin of, and the possible reasons for, uncertainties in the hydrological model response to global warming. Using the twentieth century simulations and the SRES-A2 scenarios from eight different coupled ocean–atmosphere models, it is shown that the main uncertainties originate from the tropics, where even the sign of the zonal mean precipitation change remains uncertain over land. Given the large interannual fluctuations of tropical precipitation, it is then suggested that the El Niño Southern Ocillation (ENSO) variability can be used as a surrogate of climate change to better constrain the model reponse. While the simulated sensitivity of global land precipitation to global mean surface temperature indeed shows a remarkable similarity between the interannual and climate change timescales respectively, the model ability to capture the ENSO-precipitation relationship is not a major constraint on the global hydrological projections. Only the model that exhibits the highest precipitation sensitivity clearly appears as an outlier. Besides deficiencies in the simulation of the ENSO-tropical rainfall teleconnections, the study indicates that uncertainties in the twenty-first century evolution of these teleconnections represent an important contribution to the model spread, thus emphasizing the need for improving the simulation of the tropical Pacific variability to provide more reliable scenarios of the global hydrological cycle. It also suggests that validating the mean present-day climate is not sufficient to assess the reliability of climate projections, and that interannual variability is another suitable and possibly more useful candidate for constraining the model response. Finally, it is shown that uncertainties in precipitation change are, like precipitation itself, very unevenly distributed over the globe, the most vulnerable countries sometimes being those where the anticipated precipitation changes are the most uncertain. 相似文献
9.
Michela Biasutti Adam H. Sobel Suzana J. Camargo Timothy T. Creyts 《Climatic change》2012,112(3-4):819-845
As the global climate warms due to increasing greenhouse gases, the regional climate of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean region will also change. This study presents the latest estimates of the expected changes in temperature, precipitation, tropical cyclone activity, and sea level. Changes in temperature and precipitation are derived from climate model simulations produced for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR4), by comparing projections for the mid- and late-21st century to the late 20th century and assuming a “middle-of-the-road” scenario for future greenhouse gas emissions. Regional simulations from the North America Regional Climate Change Program (NARCCAP) are used to corroborate the IPCC AR4 rainfall projections over the US portion of the domain. Changes in tropical cyclones and sea level are more uncertain, and our understanding of these variables has changed more since IPCC AR4 than in the case of temperature and precipitation. For these quantities, the current state of knowledge is described based on the recent peer-reviewed literature. 相似文献
10.
Recent Rapid Regional Climate Warming on the Antarctic Peninsula 总被引：15，自引：1，他引：15
David G. Vaughan Gareth J. Marshall William M. Connolley Claire Parkinson Robert Mulvaney Dominic A. Hodgson John C. King Carol J. Pudsey John Turner 《Climatic change》2003,60(3):243-274
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed that mean global warming was 0.6 ± 0.2 °C during the 20th century and cited anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases as the likely cause of temperature rise in the last 50 years. But this mean value conceals the substantial complexity of observed climate change, which is seasonally- and diurnally-biased, decadally-variable and geographically patchy. In particular, over the last 50 years three high-latitude areas have undergone recent rapid regional (RRR) warming, which was substantially more rapid than the global mean. However, each RRR warming occupies a different climatic regime and may have an entirely different underlying cause. We discuss the significance of RRR warming in one area, the Antarctic Peninsula. Here warming was much more rapid than in the rest of Antarctica where it was not significantly different to the global mean. We highlight climate proxies that appear to show that RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula is unprecedented over the last two millennia, and so unlikely to be a natural mode of variability. So while the station records do not indicate a ubiquitous polar amplification of global warming, the RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula might be a regional amplification of such warming. This, however, remains unproven since we cannot yet be sure what mechanism leads to such an amplification. We discuss several possible candidate mechanisms: changing oceanographic or changing atmospheric circulation, or a regional air-sea-ice feedback amplifying greenhouse warming. We can show that atmospheric warming and reduction in sea-ice duration coincide in a small area on the west of the Antarctic Peninsula, but here we cannot yet distinguish cause and effect. Thus for the present we cannot determine which process is the probable cause of RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula and until the mechanism initiating and sustaining the RRR warming is understood, and is convincingly reproduced in climate models, we lack a sound basis for predicting climate change in this region over the coming century. 相似文献
11.
Global warming is expected to affect both the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, though projections of the response of these events to climate warming remain highly uncertain. The range of changes reported in the climate modelling literature is very large, sometimes leading to contradictory results for a given extreme weather event. Much of this uncertainty stems from the incomplete understanding of the physics of extreme weather processes, the lack of representation of mesoscale processes in coarse-resolution climate models, and the effect of natural climate variability at multi-decadal time scales. However, some of the spread in results originates simply from the variety of scenarios for future climate change used to drive climate model simulations, which hampers the ability to make generalizations about predicted changes in extreme weather events. In this study, we present a meta-analysis of the literature on projected future extreme weather events in order to quantify expected changes in weather extremes as a function of a common metric of global mean temperature increases. We find that many extreme weather events are likely to be significantly affected by global warming. In particular, our analysis indicates that the overall frequency of global tropical cyclones could decrease with global warming but that the intensity of these storms, as well as the frequency of the most intense cyclones could increase, particularly in the northwestern Pacific basin. We also found increases in the intensity of South Asian monsoonal rainfall, the frequency of global heavy precipitation events, the number of North American severe thunderstorm days, North American drought conditions, and European heatwaves, with rising global mean temperatures. In addition, the periodicity of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation may decrease, which could, in itself, influence extreme weather frequency in many areas of the climate system. 相似文献
12.
全球变暖趋缓研究进展 总被引：16，自引：5，他引：11
近十几年来,全球年平均表面温度上升趋势显示出停滞状态,即全球变暖趋缓,这引起了国际社会的广泛关注,同时也引发了对全球变暖的质疑,各国气候学家正努力就全球变暖趋缓的事实、原因及其可能影响展开研究。本文综述了目前国内外对全球变暖趋缓的研究结果。多数科学家认可近十几年来全球变暖停滞的事实,并认为太阳活动处于低位相、大气气溶胶（自然和人为）增加以及海洋吸收热量是变暖停滞的可能影响因子,其中海洋（尤其是700米以下的深海）对热量的储存可能是变暖停滞的关键。国际耦合模式比较计划第5阶段中的模式并未精确地描述各种有利降温影响因子的近期位相演变,因而其模拟的近期增暖趋势较观测偏强。由此推断,变暖停滞主要是自然因素造成的,并且预测变暖趋缓将在近几年或几十年内结束（依赖于太平洋年代际振荡的位相转变）,未来气温将仍主要受到温室气体增加的影响而表现出明显的上升趋势。因此,目前的全球变暖趋缓不大可能改变到本世纪末全球大幅度变暖带来的风险。本综述展望未来的研究热点包括:精确估算全球气温和海洋热含量的变率及其不确定性,海洋年代际信号（太平洋以及大西洋的年代际振荡）的转型机制,存储在深海的热量将在何时返回海洋表面及其对区域气候的潜在影响。 相似文献
13.
太阳是地球流体(大气和海洋等)运动的最终能量源,地球环境,尤其是气候的变化不能不与太阳活动有关.目前,普遍将全球增暖归结为温室气体含量增加所导致的温室效应的加剧,这无疑是有一定依据和有道理的.但从科学上来讲,人类活动所引起温室气体增加的影响,并非是唯一原因.基于已有的一些研究结果,从太阳活动的观点所进行的初步分析表明,太阳活动也可能是引起近世纪全球增暖的另一个重要原因.太阳活动的影响主要包括太阳辐射的直接影响和引发地磁场变化的间接影响两个方面,地球磁场的变化将可通过动力过程和热力过程而影响大气环流和气候的变化. 相似文献
14.
Mankind's impact on climate: The evolution of an awareness 总被引：5，自引：0，他引：5
William W. Kellogg 《Climatic change》1987,10(2):113-136
The first inklings of an understanding of the role played by infraredabsorbing gases in maintaining the warmth of the surface of our planet were voiced early in the 19th century, and by the turn of this century quantitative calculations had been carried out that demonstrated how a change in atmospheric carbon dioxide would alter the earth's mean temperature. However, it was not until the 1960s that much attention was paid to this matter, and in the early 1970s two important summer studies dealing with environmental change fired the imagination of the scientific community. Since then the science (or art) of modeling the climate system has made great strides, aided by faster computers, greater knowledge of the factors involved, and global observations from space of the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere. This effort has also been bolstered by studies of the behavior of the climate system in the past. There is now a strong consensus that the observed increase in the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other infrared-absorbing trace gases is indeed warming the earth, and that this change is caused by mankind. The next set of questions are now being seriously addressed in national and international forums: what are the regional patterns of the changes to be anticipated, especially in terms of rainfall and soil moisture? And what should the countries of the world do about the situation? There is already a sharp debate between the activists, who would take action worldwide to avoid the climate change (or at least slow its advance), and those who would simply wait and see what happens and perhaps take what local measures are necessary to mitigate the effects. 相似文献
15.
古气候的启示 总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1
回顾了近20～30年古气候的研究进展,包括下列问题:雪球和热力极大期、冰期-间冰期旋回、古季风、D/O循环和H事件、全新世季风、全新世气候突变、气候变化与古文明、近2000年的气候。研究表明,第四纪前的气候变化中CO_2起着重要的作用,但是在冰期-间冰期旋回中CO_2变化落后于温度变化。这说明虽然影响机制不同,但是温室气体和气候间有着密切的相互作用这一点则是可以肯定的。地球目前处于间冰期,面临着冰期来临的威胁。人类活动造成的气候变暖有可能推迟下一次冰期的到来。21世纪全球变暖仍将继续,人们可能做的、也是必须要做的,是尽可能地降低变暖的速率,以及可能达到的变暖峰值。 相似文献
16.
Detection, Causes and Projection of Climate Change over China： An Overview of Recent Progress 总被引：19，自引：0，他引：19
This article summarizes the main results and findings of studies conducted by Chinese scientists in the past five years.It is shown that observed climate change in China bears a strong similarity with the global average.The country-averaged annual mean surface air temperature has increased by 1.1℃over the past 50 years and 0.5-0.8℃over the past 100 years,slightly higher than the global temperature increase for the same periods.Northern China and winter have experienced the greatest increases in surface air temperature.Although no significant trend has been found in country-averaged annual precipitation, interdecadal variability and obvious trends on regional scales are detectable,with northwestern China and the mid and lower Yangtze River basin having undergone an obvious increase,and North China a severe drought.Some analyses show that frequency and magnitude of extreme weather and climate events have also undergone significant changes in the past 50 years or so. Studies of the causes of regional climate change through the use of climate models and consideration of various forcings,show that the warming of the last 50 years could possibly be attributed to an increased atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases,while the temperature change of the first half of the 20th century may be due to solar activity,volcanic eruptions and sea surface temperature change.A significant decline in sunshine duration and solar radiation at the surface in eastern China has been attributed to the increased emission of pollutants. Projections of future climate by models of the NCC(National Climate Center,China Meteorological Administration)and the IAP(Institute of Atmospheric Physics,Chinese Academy of Sciences),as well as 40 models developed overseas,indicate a potential significant warming in China in the 21st century,with the largest warming set to occur in winter months and in northern China.Under varied emission scenarios,the country-averaged annual mean temperature is projected to increase by 1.5-2.1℃by 2020,2.3-3.3℃by 2050, and by 3.9-6.0℃by 2100,in comparison to the 30-year average of 1961 1990.Most models project a 10% 12% increase in annual precipitation in China by 2100,with the trend being particularly evident in Northeast and Northwest China,but with parts of central China probably undergoing a drying trend.Large uncertainty exists in the projection of precipitation,and further studies are needed.Furthermore,anthropogenic climate change will probably lead to a weaker winter monsoon and a stronger summer monsoon in eastern Asia. 相似文献
17.
The East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) circulation and summer rainfall over East China have experienced large decadal changes
during the latter half of the 20th century. To investigate the potential causes behind these changes, a series of simulations
using the national center for atmospheric research (NCAR) community atmospheric model version 3 (CAM3) and the geophysical
fluid dynamics laboratory (GFDL) atmospheric model version 2.1 (AM2.1) are analyzed. These simulations are forced separately
with different historical forcing, namely tropical sea surface temperature (SSTs), global SSTs, greenhouse gases plus aerosols,
and a combination of global SSTs and greenhouse gases plus aerosols. This study focuses on the relative roles of these individual
forcings in causing the observed monsoon and rainfall changes over East Asia during 1950–2000. The simulations from both models
show that the SST forcing, primarily from the Tropics, is able to induce most of the observed weakening of the EASM circulation,
while the greenhouse gas plus (direct) aerosol forcing increases the land-sea thermal contrast and thus enhances the EASM
circulation. The results suggest that the recent warming in the Tropics, especially the warming associated with the tropical
interdecadal variability centered over the central and eastern Pacific, is a primary cause for the weakening of the EASM since
the late 1970s. However, a realistic simulation of the relatively small-scale rainfall change pattern over East China remains
a challenge for the global models. 相似文献
18.
《Journal of Meteorological Research》2021,(2):225-237
Continuous emissions of anthropogenic greenhouse gases(GHGs) and aerosols in the last 160 years have resulted in an increasing trend of global mean surface temperatures(GMSTs). Due to interactions with natural variability,rates of the combined anthropogenically and naturally induced warming trends are characterized by significant slowdowns and speedups on decadal timescales. Here, by analyzing observed and model-simulated data, we investigate how the duration of these episodes will change with different strengths of GHG and aerosol forcing. We found that the duration of warming slowdowns can be more than 30 yr with a slower rate of anthropogenic emissions but would shorten to about 5 yr with a higher one. This duration reduction depends on both the magnitude of the climate response to anthropogenic forcing and the strength of the internal variability. Moreover, the warming slowdowns can still occur even towards the end of this century under high emissions scenarios but with significantly shortened duration. 相似文献
19.
B. R. Stanton 《Climatic change》1991,18(2-3):175-194
The oceans have a major influence on climate through the ocean-atmosphere exchange processes. However, limits to our present understanding of some of these processes is an important factor in our inability to model climate change precisely. Present knowledge of ocean structure and circulation is reviewed, with a particular emphasis on the Southern Hemisphere oceans, and the major ocean-atmosphere exchanges are examined. The influence of interhemispheric asymmetries in global warming scenarios is discussed. An improved understanding of the oceans and therefore better climate models will result from planned international ocean research experiments in the 1990s. 相似文献
20.
Uncertainties in the regional climate models simulations of South-Asian summer monsoon and climate change 总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1
The uncertainties in the regional climate models (RCMs) are evaluated by analyzing the driving global data of ERA40 reanalysis and ECHAM5 general circulation models, and the downscaled data of two RCMs (RegCM4 and PRECIS) over South-Asia for the present day simulation (1971–2000) of South-Asian summer monsoon. The differences between the observational datasets over South-Asia are also analyzed. The spatial and the quantitative analysis over the selected climatic regions of South-Asia for the mean climate and the inter-annual variability of temperature, precipitation and circulation show that the RCMs have systematic biases which are independent from different driving datasets and seems to come from the physics parameterization of the RCMs. The spatial gradients and topographically-induced structure of climate are generally captured and simulated values are within a few degrees of the observed values. The biases in the RCMs are not consistent with the biases in the driving fields and the models show similar spatial patterns after downscaling different global datasets. The annual cycle of temperature and rainfall is well simulated by the RCMs, however the RCMs are not able to capture the inter-annual variability. ECHAM5 is also downscaled for the future (2071–2100) climate under A1B emission scenario. The climate change signal is consistent between ECHAM5 and RCMs. There is warming over all the regions of South-Asia associated with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and the increase in summer mean surface air temperature by the end of the century ranges from 2.5 to 5 °C, with maximum warming over north western parts of the domain and 30 % increase in rainfall over north eastern India, Bangladesh and Myanmar. 相似文献