Regional Climate Modeling for the Developing World: The ICTP RegCM3 and RegCNET

TLDR

Regional climate models are essential tools for scientists worldwide, including in economically developing nations, and the ICTP’s RegCM3 is a state‑of‑the‑art model distributed by the Earth Systems Physics group, forming the core of the RegCNET network that promotes south‑south and north‑south climate research collaborations. The paper presents RegCNET, RegCM3, and benchmark simulation results over South Asia, Africa, and South America. Benchmark simulations were performed with RegCM3 across these regions to evaluate its suitability for climate studies in economically developing nations. RegCM3 shows reasonable performance over South Asia, Africa, and South America, demonstrating its usefulness for climate studies in EDNs.

Abstract

Regional climate models are important research tools available to scientists around the world, including in economically developing nations (EDNs). The Earth Systems Physics (ESP) group of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) maintains and distributes a state-of-the-science regional climate model called the ICTP Regional Climate Model version 3 (RegCM3), which is currently being used by a large research community for a diverse range of climate-related studies. The RegCM3 is the central, but not only, tool of the ICTP-maintained Regional Climate Research Network (RegCNET) aimed at creating south–south and north–south scientific interactions on the topic of climate and associated impacts research and modeling. In this paper, RegCNET, RegCM3, and illustrative results from RegCM3 benchmark simulations applied over south Asia, Africa, and South America are presented. It is shown that RegCM3 performs reasonably well over these regions and is therefore useful for climate studies in EDNs.