Climate model output from a study of tropical cyclones over the Shanghai region under climate change based on a convection-permitting modelling

Changes in tropical cyclones due to greenhouse-gas forcing in the Shanghai area have been studied in a double-nesting regional model experiment using the Met Office convection-permitting model HadREM3-RA1T at 4km resolution and the regional model HadREM3-GA7.05 at 12km for the intermediate nest. Boundary conditions for the experiment have been constructed from HadGEM2-ES, a General Circulation Model (GCM) from the 5th Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), directly using high-frequency data for the atmosphere (6-hourly) and the ocean (daily), for the historical period (1981-2000) and under the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (2080-2099). These choices identify one of the warmest climate scenarios available from CMIP5. Given the direct use of GCM data for the baseline, large scale conditions relevant for tropical cyclones have been analyzed, demonstrating a realistic representation of environmental conditions off the coast of eastern China. GCM large scale changes show a reduction in wind shear in addition to the expected strong increase in sea surface temperature. Tropical cyclones from the 4km historical simulation have a negative bias in intensity, not exceeding Category 4, and a wet bias in the rainfall associated with these cyclones. However, there is a clear improvement in cyclone intensity and rainfall at 4km in comparison with the 12km simulation. Climate change responses in the 4km simulation include an extension of the tropical cyclone season, and strong increases in frequency of the most intense cyclones (approximately by a factor of 10) and associated rainfall. These are consistent with the results from the 12km simulation.

Basic Data Description:

This dataset included the HadREM3-GA7.05 and HadREM3-RA1T model output used in the analysis of this paper and the HadGEM2-ES meteorological variables for the historical run  not included in the CMIP5 archive at the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) archive.

Methods
Data has been generated by climate models and converted to NetCDF4 format (interfaces for commonly used languages available at https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/), following the CF metadata convention (https://cfconventions.org/) . The conversion has been done using the IRIS package under Python (https://scitools-iris.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html) and the NCO utilities (https://nco.sourceforge.net/). The buffer zone has been removed from the output of limited area models.