Future temperature projections for Rwanda using statistical downscaling

Abstract

Climate change is considered to be one of the greatest environmental threats to the world, and the changes in climate extremes are estimated to have greater negative impacts on human society and the natural environment than the changes in mean climate. This study presents the projections of future temperature over Rwanda. SDSM downscaling method was used as a tool for downscaling weather data statistically in Rwanda. Four Global Climate Models (GCMs), CNRM-CERFACS-CNRM-CM5, ICHEC-EC-Earth, MOHC-HadGEM2-ES, MPI-M-MPIESM-LR have been used to project future temperature. The predictor variables are extracted from: Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) under RCP scenarios RCP 8.5 have been presented for future periods: 2021-2050 Different methods were used for verifying the performance of the simulation .After analysis (Maximum temperature increases in future for almost all the scenarios for both GCMs.). After analysis, the model MPI-M-MPI-ESM-LR became more useful compared to others. Key words: Climate change, Temperature, Downscaling, Rwanda