This study examined the performance of global climate models in representing observed spatial and temporal patterns of climate extremes and inspected the projection of climate extremes in the Asia-Pacific region under a future warmer climate scenario. For the last few decades, observations show considerable warming of temperature extremes in high-topographic regions such as the eastern part of Northern Asia (NAS), the Tibetan Plateau (TIB), and East Asia (EAS), whereas models simulate weaker warming in the same regions. Models simulate more warming in sub-tropical regions such as South Asia (SAS), the western part of East Asia (EAS) and Northern Australia (NAU). Observations reveal increasing trends in annual total precipitation in wet days, very wet days, and extremely wet days, especially in Northern Asia (NAS), South Asia (SAS), Northern Australia (NAU) and Southern Australia (SAU), whereas models fail to capture such trends in precipitation extremes over the same regions.

Under the projected future climate, asymmetric extreme events are expected to arise in the late 21st century. The annual number of warm extreme events (TX90p and TN90p) is expected to increase more, and with greater variance, than is the number of cool extreme events (TX10p and TN10p). It is expected that tropical regions (South Asia (SAS), Indochina, Southeast Asia (SEA), and Northern Australia (NAU)) may possibly make a more considerable contribution to the large median increase in projected warm events than other regions at higher latitudes, and the larger variance of warm events may possibly be attributable to the increase in temperature extreme variability in South Asia (SAS) and Northern Australia (NAU). Increasing trends in warm extremes are expected to be large, especially in South Asia (SAS), Southeast Asia (SEA), and Northern Australia (NAU), and those regions are expected to experience more frequent and long-lasting warm spells. Based on the projected changes in precipitation extremes, many regions located in South Asia (SAS), East Asia (SEA), Southeast Asia (SEA) and Northern Asia (NAS) may be expected to undergo heavy precipitation extremes in the future climate. The fraction of annual high precipitation amounts due to very wet days (R95pTOT) and extremely wet days (R99pTOT) is expected to increase substantially over those regions.

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

1.2 Purpose of the study

2. METHODOLOGY

2.1 Model and experiments

2.2 Climate extreme indices

2.3 Temporal and spatial trend analysis

3. RESULTS

3.1 Comparison between observed and simulated extremes over the Asia-Pacific region

3.2 Projected future changes in extremes over the Asia-Pacific region

4. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIO