WCRP CORDEX Flagship Pilot Study LUCAS - Land Use & Climate Across Scales

To this CORDEX Flagship Pilot Study, which is coordinated by Dr. Diana Rechid from the Climate Service Center in Germany (GERICS) we contribute with simulations with the WRF model and the study of the model ensemble results with respect to the Science questions.

FPS LUCAS: Major science questions

• How sensitive are the regional climate models to LUC and how is this interrelated to the land-atmosphere coupling strength in different regions and seasons among the suite of models?
• How large is the contribution of LUC to detected past and potential future climate trends and variability?
• What is the effect of spatial resolution on the magnitude and robustness of LUC-induced climate changes?
• How do land use practices modulate climate variability? Can local LUC reduce or amplify extreme climate conditions?

Climate Simulations

Phase 1:

Idealized experiments / Continental scale:

• Extreme land forcing on the EURO-CORDEX 0.44 domain („Potential Forest“ vs. „Grasses“)

Phase 2:

Realistic experiments / Continental scale:

• Evaluation simulation (ERA-Interim) no LUC / re-constructed historical land use changes
• Future projections (identical GCM) no LUC / projected LUC e.g. based on RCP/SSP (LUH2 25 km), or based on high resolution land use modelling (e.g. 1 km)

Phase 3:

High resolution experiments in spatially refined pilot regions:

• Multiple gridded nests down to < 5 km for investigating feedbacks of local scale land use dynamics on climate
• One identical region with Med-CORDEX/EURO-CORDEX FPS on Convective Phenomena is planned