CORDEX–Africa
Climate Analysis Workshop 4
7-11 August 2017, University of Cape Town
The workshop was held in the CSAG computer labs and the four regional groups had most delegates present at the workshop. The workshop has been planned to revisit the papers begun during the February 2016 workshops to refine the research questions, develop key figures and develop the framework and story line of the paper.
However, a discussion on Monday morning about whether it was possible to respond to the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 degrees of global warming concluded that each regional group in the cohort would like to write a first order analysis paper that addresses the regional change under 1.5 and 2 degrees based on all available CORDEX and relevant CMIP models.
A coordinated approach was adopted in which each of the four regional group analyzed CORDEX data for a 30-year window centered around the mean year that each driving GCM reached 1.5 and 2 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures for RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. Similar types of analyses were conducted by each group, which analyzed the seasonal and annual characteristics of temperature and rainfall change at these global warming levels under the two RCPs.
Three other papers were produced in addition to these four regional papers. A pan-Africa paper was produced which describes the methodologies used to determine the 30-year period that the respective global warming levels were reached under each RCP and how the figures were produced. A paper that used all available CMIP5 models investigated country-scale changes in rainfall and temperature at 1.5 and 2 degrees of global warming with a special focus on changes in aridity. A third introductory paper elucidated the need for regional climate information under different degrees of global warming.
It was decided to submit all papers to one journal and we approached Environmental Research Letters (ERL) to developed a Focus Collection. The focus collection is titled “Modelling of Regional Climate Change over Africa at 1.5°C and 2°C of Global Warming” and Guest Editors are Colin Jones and Mouhamadou Bamba Sylla. Each group worked tremendously hard and the seven papers were all submitted to ERL before the November 1 deadline to be included in the SR15 review report.
All papers are currently under review and review comments will be addressed at the December 2017 workshop or February 2018 workshop as appropriate.