CCLM_CASISAC

Tim, Nele; Zorita, Eduardo; Hünicke, Birgit; Behrend, Ioana

Changes in rainfall extremes over Southern Africa over the 20th and 21st centuries simulated by a high-resolution regional climate model and their connection to the Agulhas Current System

Tim, Nele et al.

Experiment

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extreme events hindcast historical run Ocean-atmosphere interaction Precipitation SSP5-8.5 scenario

Summary: We analysed extreme precipitation over Southern Africa using high-resolution atmospheric CCLM simulations. The strongest precipitation occurs over Madagascar and the adjacent mainland. Extremes are generally stronger in the Summer Rainfall Zone than in the Winter Rainfall Zones, are projected to intensify along the South African coast, and the Agulhas Current has no discernible impact on rainfall events along the South African coast.
We used three simulations with the atmospheric regional model CCLM (COSMO model in CLimate Mode, https://www.clm-community.eu, model version 5.0 clm10). These simulations cover Southern Africa (10°W-55°E, 0-55°S) and have a horizontal resolution of 16 km. A hindcast simulation is driven by the atmospheric reanalysis dataset JRA-55 (Kobayashi et al., 2015), covering 1958 to April 2019. The regional climate model is forced not only at the lateral boundaries but also constrained within the domain using spectral nudging (von Storch et al., 2017). This approach ensures consistency with the large-scale atmospheric circulation of the driving data while allowing the model to develop its own variability at smaller spatial scales.

The historical simulation (1951-2013) and the scenario simulation (2014-2099), which incorporates the emissions scenario of greenhouse gases SSP5-8.5 (Lee et al., 2021), are driven by global climate simulations with the coupled model FOCI (Matthes et al., 2020, model version 1.14), with interactive ozone chemistry. The FOCI model includes a coupled ocean component (NEMO), which is configured at a high spatial resolution of 0.1° around Southern Africa. This allows for an explicit representation of key features of the Agulhas Current System, including its retroflection and leakage, which are relevant for regional ocean–atmosphere interactions.
Our analysis, "The impact of the Agulhas Current system on precipitation in southern Africa in regional climate simulations covering the recent past and future", uses the same set of CCLM simulations (Tim et al., 2023).
Using other FOCI1.14 simulations, Ivanciu et al. (2022) calculated the Agulhas Current and Agulhas Leakage in the same way and published the data here: https://zenodo.org/records/5013716.
Project: SPACES II: CASISAC (Changes in the Agulhas System and its Impact on Southern African Coasts - Regional atmospheric modelling and precipitation changes)
Contact: Dr. Nele Tim (
nele.tim@nullhereon.de
0000-0002-6336-5897)
Spatial Coverage: Longitude -10 to 55 Latitude -55 to 0
Temporal Coverage: 1951-01-01 to 2099-11-30
Use constraints: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Data Catalog: World Data Center for Climate
Format: NetCDF
Status: metadata only
Creation Date: 2026-09-29
Review Date: 2026-09-30

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Cite as: Tim, Nele; Zorita, Eduardo; Hünicke, Birgit; Behrend, Ioana (2026). CCLM_CASISAC. World Data Center for Climate (WDCC) at DKRZ. https://www.wdc-climate.de/ui/entry?acronym=CASISAC

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Funding: Federal Ministry of Education and Research
Grant/Award No: 03F0796

Contact type	Person	ORCID	Organization
Contact	Dr. Nele Tim	0000-0002-6336-5897	Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon
Author	Dr. Nele Tim	0000-0002-6336-5897	Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon
Author	Dr. Eduardo Zorita	0000-0002-7264-5743	Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon
Author	Dr. Birgit Hünicke	0000-0002-5829-6444	Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon
Author	Dr. Ioana Behrend	0000-0003-2878-7047	GEOMAR Helmholtz-Zentrum für Ozeanforschung
Investigator	Dr. Nele Tim	0000-0002-6336-5897	Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon
Funder	-	-	Federal Ministry of Education and Research

Is documented by

[1] DOI von Storch, Hans; Feser, Frauke; Geyer, Beate; Klehmet, Katharina; Li, Delei; Rockel, Burkhardt; Schubert-Frisius, Martina; Tim, Nele; Zorita, Eduardo. (2017). Regional reanalysis without local data: Exploiting the downscaling paradigm. doi:10.1002/2016jd026332

[2] DOI Lee, J.-Y.; Marotzke, J.; Bala, G.; Cao, L.; Corti, S.; Dunne, J.P.; Engelbrecht, F.; Fischer, E.; Fyfe, J.C; Jones, C.; Maycock, A.; Mutemi, J.; Ndiaye, O.; Panickal, S.; Zhou,T. (2023). Future Global Climate: Scenario-Based Projections and Near-Term Information. In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S.L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M.I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J.B.R. Matthews, T.K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu, and B. Zhou (eds.)]. doi:10.1017/9781009157896.006

[3] DOI Ivanciu, Ioana; Matthes, Katja; Biastoch, Arne; Wahl, Sebastian; Harlaß, Jan. (2022). Twenty-first-century Southern Hemisphere impacts of ozone recovery and climate change from the stratosphere to the ocean. doi:10.5194/wcd-3-139-2022

[4] DOI Tim, Nele; Zorita, Eduardo; Hünicke, Birgit; Ivanciu, Ioana. (2023). The impact of the Agulhas Current system on precipitation in southern Africa in regional climate simulations covering the recent past and future. doi:10.5194/wcd-4-381-2023

Is compiled by

[1] DOI Matthes, Katja; Biastoch, Arne; Wahl, Sebastian; Harlaß, Jan; Martin, Torge; Brücher, Tim; Drews, Annika; Ehlert, Dana; Getzlaff, Klaus; Krüger, Fritz; Rath, Willi; Scheinert, Markus; Schwarzkopf, Franziska U.; Bayr, Tobias; Schmidt, Hauke; Park, Wonsun. (2020). The Flexible Ocean and Climate Infrastructure version 1 (FOCI1): mean state and variability. doi:10.5194/gmd-13-2533-2020

Is derived from

[1] DOI KOBAYASHI, Shinya; OTA, Yukinari; HARADA, Yayoi; EBITA, Ayataka; MORIYA, Masami; ONODA, Hirokatsu; ONOGI, Kazutoshi; KAMAHORI, Hirotaka; KOBAYASHI, Chiaki; ENDO, Hirokazu; MIYAOKA, Kengo; TAKAHASHI, Kiyotoshi. (2015). The JRA-55 Reanalysis: General Specifications and Basic Characteristics. doi:10.2151/jmsj.2015-001

Attached Datasets ( 5 )

Parent project(s)

Changes in the Agulhas System and its Impact on Southern African Coasts - Regional atmospheric modelling and precipitation changes

[Entry acronym: CASISAC] [Entry id: 5387384]