The Role of Global Mitigation in Regional Climate Change in Central/Eastern Europe

Different scenarios consider possible future pathways mainly related to the start of the substantial reduction of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission. The Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) scenario family is defined on the basis of radiative forcing changes by 2.6, 4.5 and 8.5 W/m². The timeframe of them is the end of the 21^st century relative to the pre-industrial era.

In this study, the projected regional climate change is compared as the function of the radiative forcing change and global climatic response. For this purpose, we completed regional climate model RegCM simulations at a horizontal resolution of 10 km driven by the same global climate model (i.e., HadGEM) but using the three different RCP scenarios. The target region covers the Carpathian basin located in Central/Eastern Europe, focusing on Hungary. The reference period is defined as 1986-2005, which the last two decades of historical model runs. The target period is mainly the last two decades of the 21^st century (i.e., 2080-2099). The changes of monthly, seasonal and annual mean temperature and precipitation totals as well, as frequency, intensity and duration of extreme events (represented by extreme climatic indices) are analyzed.

Acknowledgements: Research leading to this study has been supported by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Fund under grant K-129162 and the National Multidisciplinary Laboratory for Climate Change (RRF-2.3.1-21-2022-00014).