In view of fast global environmental change and the threat of advancing global warming in recent decades, climate change has been chosen as one of the key research subjects by many countries around the world. One of the particularly important and pressing topic is the changes in regional scale and its local impact.
The MOST vanguard project “Anthropogenic Climate Change: Analysis, Capacity advancement, and CMIP6 participation (ACC2)” started the participation in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6, an international project sponsored by the World Climate Research Programme to provide scientific basis for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report) under the name Taiwan. TaiESM has been used in long-term global climate simulation and projection following CMIP6 guidelines and provide the simulation data produced in Taiwan to international research community. An evaluation based on multiple performance indicators shows that TaiESM is ranked the eighth among 37 climate models worldwide, is about as good as the Japanese Meteorological Research Institute model, and is above the other Asian (e.g., Korean and Chinese) climate models. It is not an easy task considering that the resources and time put into the TaiESM development is much less than in other countries. Continuing improvements are being conducted to correct model biases and prepare for the implementation of an improved version of TaiESM.
The Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) launched in 2011 a climate model development project to implement the Taiwan Earth System model (TaiESM, 100km resolution) and the High-Resolution Atmospheric Model (HiRAM, 25/50km resolution) and combine with the extreme-high resolution regional model (WRF, 3–5km resolution) to establish a global-to-regional climate model suit. The system has been used for assessing the climate change impact on East Asian monsoon, and on the high-impact weathers in Taiwan.
The MOST climate model development team has been working closely with another MOST project “Taiwan Climate Change Projection Information and Adaptation Knowledge Platform” on the township-scale projection of future climate change in Taiwan by using HiRAM and WRF. The major focuses are the changes associated with high-impact weathers such as landfalling typhoon, heavy rainfall, afternoon thunderstorm, drought, and heat wave. Such information can be further applied to assess the climate change impacts on Taiwan’s natural disasters, water resources, ecology, agriculture, public health, economics, society, and social wellbeing, and for planning adaptation policy.
In many years, the Ministry of Science and Technology has been encouraging the scientific research. This research plan is under the long-term support of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the project started the participation in the World Climate Research Programme under the name Taiwan.
Media Contact
Dr. Fang-Chun Liu
Department of Natural Sciences and Sustainable Development,
Ministry of Science and Technology
TEL: 02-27377022
Email: fcliu@nstc.gov.tw
