Present climate and trends in the simulations of RegCM4-CMIP5 for the South America

For the South America CORDEX (Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment) domain, we present the RegCM4 simulations forced by three CMIP5 global models (MPI-ESM-MR, GFDL-ESM2M and HadGEM2-ES) in the present climate (1975-2005) and future (2006-2100) RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 greenhouse gas concentrations pathways. RegCM4 downscaling domain covers the South America continent and part of the adjacent oceans with 50 km of horizontal resolution and 18 sigma-pressure levels. First all, it is presented the consistency between each RegCM4 simulation and its respective driven GCM in present climate. This consistency is evaluated through of the spatial pattern correlation and the index of agreement for the mean of simulated seasonal fields and its trends. The objective is to access the main source of spread and uncertainty in the simulated present climate (from RegCM4 or driving GCMs). After that, we examine the pattern of trends in both RegCM4 and GCMs to identify what is driving the spatial pattern of change.