Keshta et al. (2025) Enhancing Climate Modeling over the Upper Blue Nile Basin Using RegCM5-MOLOCH

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Climate
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-10-02
• Authors: Eatemad Keshta, Doaa Amin, Ashraf M. Elmoustafa, Mohamed A. Gad
• DOI: 10.3390/cli13100206

Research Groups

Not explicitly stated in the provided text, but likely a climate modeling or hydrological research group.

Short Summary

This study enhances the RegCM5 climate model with the MOLOCH dynamical core to improve precipitation and temperature simulations over the Upper Blue Nile Basin, finding that the MOLOCH-UW configuration is the most reliable for reproducing regional climate variability.

Objective

• To address the challenges of climate simulation over the Upper Blue Nile Basin (UBNB) by enhancing the Regional Climate Model system (RegCM5) with its new non-hydrostatic dynamical core (MOLOCH) to simulate precipitation and temperature.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Upper Blue Nile Basin (UBNB)
• Temporal Scale: 2000–2009 (10 years)

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Regional Climate Model system (RegCM5) enhanced with the MOLOCH non-hydrostatic dynamical core. Two Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) schemes were tested: Holtslag (Hol) and University of Washington (UW).
• Data sources: ERA5 reanalysis (for driving the model); observational data (for comparison and validation).

Main Results

• The MOLOCH-UW scenario demonstrated the best precipitation performance relative to observations, exhibiting an accepted dry bias up to 22% and a high annual cycle correlation greater than 0.85.
• The MOLOCH-Hol scenario showed good precipitation performance only during the wet season, with a wet bias of 4% and a moderate correlation of approximately 0.6.
• For temperature, MOLOCH-UW also outperformed, achieving the lowest cold/warm bias range of -2% to +3% and high correlations of approximately 0.9 throughout the year and the wet season.
• The study concluded that MOLOCH-UW is the most reliable configuration for reproducing climate variability over the UBNB.

Contributions

• Development and validation of an enhanced RegCM5 system (MOLOCH-UW) specifically tailored for the complex terrain and climate of the Upper Blue Nile Basin.
• Provides a promising tool for hydroclimate applications in the basin, such as dynamical downscaling of seasonal forecasts and future climate change scenarios produced by global circulation models.

Funding

Not explicitly mentioned in the provided text.

Citation

@article{Keshta2025Enhancing,
  author = {Keshta, Eatemad and Amin, Doaa and Elmoustafa, Ashraf M. and Gad, Mohamed A.},
  title = {Enhancing Climate Modeling over the Upper Blue Nile Basin Using RegCM5-MOLOCH},
  journal = {Climate},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.3390/cli13100206},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3390/cli13100206}
}