Selecting future climate projections of surface solar radiation in Japan

Abstract

The ensemble average projections of the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) ensemble show future increases in shortwave radiation at the surface (SW) in Japan. We reveal that the Arctic Oscillation-like atmospheric circulation trends cause cloud cover decreases around Japan, leading to increases in the SW. In many cases, impact assessment studies use the outputs of only a few models due to limited research resources. We find that the four climate models used in the Japanese multisector impact assessment project, S-8, do not sufficiently capture the uncertainty ranges of the CMIP5 ensemble regarding the SW projections. Therefore, the impact assessments using the SW of these four models can be biased. We develop a novel method to select a better subset of models that are more widely distributed and are not biased, unlike the S-8 models.