New ensemble of regional climate projections for Europe

Regional climate projections complement global climate models by providing higher-resolution climate data, enabling regional climate change assessment, and supporting adaptation planning at national to local scales. Since 2022, EURO-CORDEX, the European branch of CORDEX (Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment), has been producing a new ensemble of regional climate projections for Europe at about 12.5 km resolution. These projections are generated by downscaling a subset of global climate models from the 6th phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). Part of this grand EURO-CORDEX ensemble are simulations produced by Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian national meteorological services applying a new regional modelling system—HCLIM43-ALADIN. The HCLIM ensemble comprises 16 simulations under two scenarios (SSP1-2.6 and SSP3-7.0), driven by six CMIP6 GCMs, including three EC-Earth3-Veg members that differ only in their initial conditions. We present an overview of the HCLIM ensemble together with the first evaluation and analysis of possible future climate change in Europe and Scandinavia until the end of the century. This study contributes as a reference to the HCLIM ensemble when it will be used as part of the grand EURO-CORDEX ensemble.