Projection of China’s Near- and Long-Term Climate in a New High-Resolution Daily Downscaled Dataset NEX-GDDP

The projection of China’s near- and long-term future climate is revisited with a new-generation statistically downscaled dataset, NEX-GDDP (NASA Earth Exchange Global Daily Downscaled Projections). This dataset presents a high-resolution seamless climate projection from 1950 to 2100 by combining observations and GCM results, and remarkably improves CMIP5 hindcasts and projections from large scale to regional-to-local scales with an unchanged long-term trend. Three aspects are significantly improved: (1) the climatology in the past as compared against the observations; (2) more reliable near- and long-term projections, with a modified range of absolute value and reduced inter-model spread as compared to CMIP5 GCMs; and (3) much added value at regional-to-local scales compared to GCM outputs. NEX-GDDP has great potential to become a widely-used high-resolution dataset and a benchmark of modern climate change for diverse earth science communities.