The Southeast Asia Regional Climate Downscaling (SEACLID)/ Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment - Southeast Asia (CORDEX Southeast Asia)

Welcome to the webpage of SEACLID/CORDEX Southeast Asia (CORDEX-SEA)!!

CORDEX-SEA is the fourteenth domain of CORDEX, a programme of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). CORDEX advances and coordinates the science and application of regional climate downscaling through global partnerships. In CORDEX Global climate model (GCM) outputs are "refinement" to produce "high-resolution climate change scenarios". High-resolution climate change scenarios are the basic requirment for climate change impact, vulnerability and risk assessment studies at local and regional scales. Generation of such information requires downscaling of coarser GCM outputs using regional climate model (RCM) or other techniques e.g. ESD. Due to requirment of multiple GCMs, multiple RCMs and multiple emission scenarios for quantification of uncertainties in future climate projection, dynamical regional downscaling is a time-consuming and resource-expensive exercise.

Given overlapping domains if indivdiual countries were to carry its own downscaling, having a collaborative effort and ppartnership is in the best interest of countries within the Southeast Asia (SEA) region. Hence, the Southeast Asia Regional Climate Downscaling (SEACLID) was established as a collaborative projcet in regional climate downscaling involving initially a number collaborators from various countries within the Southeast Asia region and to adopt a common domain. The project was established under the Southeast Asia Regional Climate Initiative (SEARCI), a platform for scientists within the Southeast Asia region to collaborate in climate related projects. SEARCI was informally established during a workshop hosted by the VNU Hanoi University of Science from 2-3 August 2012. SEACLID is mainly funded by the Asia-Pacific Network (APN)'s ARCP programme [ARCP2013-17NMY-Tangang] and funding within the groups that involved in the project. The second and third year of this project is funded by [ARCP2014-07CMY-Tangang] and [ARCP2015-04-CMY-Tangang], respectively. Initial member countries include Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Lao PDR. Due to its similarity, SEACLID has been streamlined and integrated into the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP)'s Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling EXperiment (CORDEX) and renamed as SEACLID/CORDEX Southeast Asia (CORDEX-SEA) with Prof. Fredolin Tangang of theNational University of Malaysia as its current Project Leader / Coordinator. In addition to the original member countries, a number of collaborators from several countries including Australia, United Kingdom, South Korea and Hong Kong SAR, Sweden, Germany and Japan have joined the project. All together, this project has involved many collaborators from 14 countries and 19 institutions.

SEACLID / CORDEX-SEA aims to downscale a number of CMIP5 GCMs for the Southeast Asia region through task-sharing basis among the institutions and countries involved. The products would be the high-resolution climate change scenarios (25 km x 25 km) for the Southeast Asia region. Downscaled model data will be archived and disseminated freely to the users through the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) in which CORDEX and APN data policies will be practiced. SEACLID/CORDEX-SEA will also provide a platform for capacity building and training especially for young scientists from within the region in regional climate modeling. The SEACLID/CORDEX-SEA product is expected to enhance scientific understanding of regional climate change in the region. With the availibility of high-resolution regional climate change scenarios, the number of climate change impact assessment studies is expected to increase. Eventually, this project would lead to the increase in peer-reviewed publications in regional climate change, impacts and policy-related aspects and narrow knowledge gaps in the region. The products of this project will facilitate the nations in the Southeast Asia to formulate their evidence-based adaptation and mitigation strategies towards sustainability and climate resilience pathways and achieving Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs).

The first Phase of CORDEX-SEA was completed in 2018 with the succesful downscaling of 11 GCMs with 7 RCMs. The progress and achievements have been documented in Tangang et al. (2020). To date more than 20 publications have been published from this project. The project has also successfully established the Southeast Asia Regional Climate Information System (SARCCIS), a dataportal for sharing CORDEX-SEA data to endusers. SARCCIS is a datanode of the ESGF, hosted by the Ramkhamaheng University Center of Regional Climate Change and Renewable Energy (RUCORE), Bangkok, Thailand. Phase 2 of CORDEX-SEA was also intiated in 2016 with the aim to further downscaling to 5 km resolution.

CORDEX-SEA will soon embark on a new intiative in downscaling CMIP6 GCMs. Institutions / Groups interested collaborate on this initiative are requested to communicate with Prof Fredolin.