Inter-comparison of historical simulation and future projections of rainfall and temperature by CMIP5 and CMIP6 GCMs over Egypt

Abstract

The global climate models (GCMs) performances of the recently released Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) compared to its predecessor, CMIP5, are evaluated to anticipate the expected changes in climate over Egypt. Thirteen GCMs and their multi-model ensemble (MME) of both CMIPs were used for this purpose. The future projections were compared for two radiative concentration pathways (RCP 4.5 and 8.5) and two shared socio-economic pathways (SSP 2–4.5 and 5–8.5). The results revealed improvement in most CMIP6 models in replicating historical rainfall, maximum temperature (Tmax), and minimum temperature (Tmin) climatology over Egypt. The MME of the CMIPs revealed that both could reproduce Egypt's spatial distribution and seasonal climate variability. However, the bias in CMIP5 was higher than that for CMIP6. The uncertainties in simulating seasonal variability of rainfall and temperatures were lower for CMIP6 compared to CMIP5. The future projection of rainfall using CMIP6 MME revealed a higher reduction of precipitation (10–26 mm) in the economically crucial northern region than that estimated using CMIP5 (0–17 mm), compared to 133.5 mm rainfall in the base period. CMIP6 also projected a 0.74–1.63°C more rise in Tmax and Tmin compared to CMIP5 by the end of the century. The study indicates more aggravated scenarios of climate changes in Egypt than anticipated earlier, using the CMIP5 models. Therefore, Egypt needs to streamline the existing adaptation and mitigation measures to account for climate projections.