Climate and climate change sensitivity to model configuration in the Canadian RCM over North America

Climate simulations performed with Regional Climate Models (RCMs) have been found to show sensitivity to parameter settings. The origin, consequences and interpretations of this sensitivity are varied, but it is generally accepted that sensitivity studies are very important for a better understanding and a more cautious manipulation of RCM results. In this work we present sensitivity experiments performed on the simulated climate produced by the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM). In addition to climate sensitivity to parameter variation, we analyse the impact of the sensitivity on the climate change signal simulated by the CRCM. These studies are performed on 30-year long simulated present and future seasonal climates, and we have analysed the effect of seven kinds of configuration modifications: CRCM initial conditions, lateral boundary condition (LBC), nesting update interval, driving Global Climate Model (GCM), driving GCM member, large-scale spectral nudging, CRCM version, and domain size. Results show that large changes in both the driving model and the CRCM physics seem to be the main sources of sensitivity for the simulated climate and the climate change. Their effects dominate those of configuration issues, such as the use or not of large-scale nudging, domain size, or LBC update interval. Results suggest that in most cases, differences between simulated climates for different CRCM configurations are not transferred to the estimated climate change signal: in general, these tend to cancel each other out.