We analyze projected changes in climate extremes (extreme temperatures and heavy precipitation) in the multimodel ensembles of the fifth and sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIP5 and CMIP6). The results reveal close similarity between both ensembles in the regional climate sensitivity of the projected multimodel mean changes in climate extremes, that is, their projected changes as a function of global warming. This stands in contrast to widely reported divergences in global (transient and equilibrium) climate sensitivity in the two multimodel ensembles. Some exceptions include higher warming in the South America monsoon region, lower warming in Southern Asia and Central Africa, and higher increases in heavy precipitation in Western Africa and the Sahel region in the CMIP6 ensemble. The multimodel spread in regional climate sensitivity is found to be large in both ensembles. In particular, it contributes more to intermodel spread in projected regional climate extremes compared with the intermodel spread in global climate sensitivity in CMIP6. Our results highlight the need to consider regional climate sensitivity as a distinct feature of Earth system models and a key determinant of projected regional impacts, which is largely independent of the models' response in global climate sensitivity.
Keywords: CMIP5; CMIP6; climate extremes; climate models; climate projections; regional climate sensitivity.
©2020. The Authors.