21st Century climate change projections of temperature and precipitation in Central Kashmir Valley under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5

Abstract

Regional climate models (RCMs) give more reliable results for a regional impact study of climate change, but they still have a significant bias that has to be corrected before they can be utilised in climate change research. In this study, two methods for local bias correction of T_max, T_min and precipitation data at monthly scales, namely the modified difference approach (MDA) and the linear scaling (LS) method, were applied and validated to minimize the bias between the modelled (HAD GEM2-ES-GCM) and observed climate data in Central Kashmir Valley. T_max, T_min and precipitation correction functions generated using the LS method on a monthly time scale were shown to be excellent than MDA for bias correction of weather data to make it close to observed data in both scenarios (RCP 4.5 & 8.5). Comparison between two scenarios was done to determine the climate change extent in Central Kashmir Valley using LS method. The past 30 years observed average temperature and precipitation was 14.17 °C and 734.06 mm, respectively considered as a baseline for comparison purpose. Annual T_average (°C) showed increase in all the three time slices and maximum increase by 3.09 and 5.72 °C during far future (FF) (2071-2095) under RCP 4.5 & 8.5, respectively. Whereas, the results of average annual precipitation also showed increase in future scenario and maximum increase by 29.25 mm (3.98%) during mid future (2046-2070) and 215.98 mm (29.42%) during end future (2071-2095), under RCP 4.5 & 8.5 respectively. It was concluded that under RCP 8.5 scenario climate change was quite significant than RCP 4.5.