Temperature variability projections remain uncertain after constraining them to best performing Large Ensembles of individual Climate Models

Abstract

Changes in temperature variability affect the frequency and intensity of extreme events, as well as the regional range of temperatures that ecosystems and society need to adapt to. While accurate projections of temperature variability are vital for understanding climate change and its impacts, they remain highly uncertain. We use rank-frequency analysis to evaluate the performance of eleven single model initial-condition large ensembles (SMILEs) against observations in the historical period, and use those that best represent historical regional variability to constrain projections of future temperature variability. Constrained projections from the best-performing SMILEs still show large uncertainties in the intensity and the sign of the variability change for large areas of the globe. Our results highlight poorly modelled regions where observed variability is not well represented such as large parts of Australia, South America, and Africa, particularly in their local summer season, underscoring the need for further modelling improvements over crucial regions. In these regions, the constrained projected change is typically larger than in the unconstrained ensemble, suggesting that in these regions, multi-model mean projections may underestimate future variability change.