| ABSTRACT | The Med-CORDEX initiative is motivated by the special morphology and socio-economic conditions of the areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea . Strong land-sea contrast, land-atmosphere feedback, intense air-sea coupling, a very active regional thermohaline circulation and aerosol-radiation interaction are among the regional characteristics to take into account when dealing the Mediterranean climate modeling. The Mediterranean region is consequently a good case study for climate regionalization and was naturally chosen as a CORDEX sub-domain (MED) leading to the Med-CORDEX initiative, which is endorsed by Med-CLIVAR and HyMeX. Further, MedCORDEX is a natural follow-up of previous and existing initiatives, and can take advantage of new very high-resolution Regional Climate Models (RCM, up to 10 km) and of new fully coupled Regional Climate System Models (RCSMs), coupling the various components of the regional climate. Med-CORDEX goals include increasing the reliability of past and future regional climate information and understanding the processes that are responsible for the Mediterranean climate variability and trends.
Today, Med-CORDEX gathers 23 different modelling groups from 9 different countries (France, Italy, Spain, Serbia, Turkey, Greece, Tunisia, Germany, Hungary) in Europe, Middle-East and North-Africa. It includes 12 atmosphere RCMs, 10 regional ocean models, 4 regional land-surface models and 12 Regional Climate System Models. Evaluation runs use the ERA-Interim reanalysis as lateral boundary conditions. Historical and scenario runs use 6 different GCMs from CMIP5.
The Med-CORDEX simulations gather 3 kind of runs (evaluation, historical, scenario), 4 kind of regional models (atmosphere, land-surface, ocean, coupled RCSM). The framework for the Med-CORDEX CORE simulations follow the CORDEX frame over the Mediterranean domain (MED-44): Atmosphere-Land only, 50 km over the MED-44 CORDEX domain , Evaluation run (ERA-Interim driven runs, 1989-2008 minimum), Historical runs (1976-2005 minimum, 1950-2005 advised) , Scenario runs (RCP8.5, RCP4.5, 2011-2040 or 2041-2070 minimum, 2006-2100 advised) . Results can be downloaded from a public database hosted at ENEA of numerical simulations produced within HyMeX and Med-CORDEX. This contribution is a short overview of the present status of MedCORDEX as reported in the contributions presented at the 3rd international MedCORDEX workshop (26-28th of May, 2014, Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France). |