Future projection for climate extremes in the North China plain using multi-model ensemble of CMIP5

Extreme climate event (ECE) had exerted great impacts on human life, and the study of extreme climate can reduce the risks caused by ECEs for social and economic development. In the study, we evaluated the spatiotemporal change characteristics of 26 extreme climate indices (ECIs) during 1971-2100 in the North China Plain (NCP) based on observed climate data and 33 Global Climate Models (GCMs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). The independence weighted mean (IWM) and arithmetic mean (AM) were used to compare with the performance of individual GCM. The projected ECIs from IWM had smaller normalized root-mean-square error (nRMSE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) with observations compared to that from the individual GCM and AM, which can better reproduce the temporal trends of ECIs in the historical period (1971-2005). Across the NCP, the extreme low-temperature indices showed significant decreasing trends during 2031-2100 under both of Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 and RCP8.5. However, the extreme high-temperature indices showed significant increasing trends and the change amplitude was larger than that of the extreme low-temperature indices. Most extreme precipitation events (except drought events) will increase across the NCP. Moreover, the change magnitude under RCP8.5 was much higher than that under RCP4.5. Overall, the results indicated that there was great application potential in multi-model ensemble for IWM. Meanwhile, there would be more heat stress and intense precipitation across the NCP in the coming decades of the twenty-first century.