We are developing the global climate model that simulates changes in the atmosphere, ocean, land and sea ice associated with climate changes such as the Global Warming, since 1980s at the Meteorological Research Institute.
Results of the global warming experiment using the global climate model have been provided for the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and also opened to the public through such as the Global Warming Projection Information Report published by Japan Meteorological Agency.
The model (MRI-CGCM2.3.2) satisfactorily reproduced historical climate change in that the globally averaged surface air temperature has been increased by about 0.7°C at present since mid-nineteenth century (Fig. 1), with performing a historical climate change experiment. Experiments for projection of future climate changes are performed with this model, based on several scenarios for the twenty-first century proposed by the IPCC (SRES). The model simulated the surface temperature increase ranging from 1.5°C to 2.8°C at the end of the twenty-first century (Fig. 1) depending upon the different scenarios. The model also simulated seasonal variation and geographical distribution of the temperature changes. For example, the surface temperature warming at the northern high latitudes emerges very strong in winter, while it does relatively weak in summer (Fig. 2), which dominantly associated with the changes in sea ice and snow. Furthermore, we are studying detailed mechanism of the global warming with investigating simulated changes in the precipitation (Fig. 3) and the atmospheric circulation (Fig. 4).