Third national climate change study ready in Sept 2023

Singapore's third national climate change study, which will provide localised and high-resolution climate projections till 2100, will be completed in September next year.

In addition, the study, also called V3, will provide the most advanced climate projections for South-east Asia, zeroing in on the region's every square of land or sea spanning 8km.

It will help the region's countries plan ways to guard against the dangerous effects of climate change in the most accurate way possible.

The model will divide Singapore and the rest of the region's land and sea into grid cells of 8km by 8km, and each cell's changes in temperature, humidity, wind speed, rainfall amount and sea-level rise will be projected till 2100.

This is finer than the usual global models, where the side of each grid cell spans between 70km and 250km, which means Singapore appears as just one grid point, or not at all, because it is only about 45km across at its widest.

The Centre for Climate Research Singapore (CCRS) has been working with the National Supercomputing Centre to scale down global climate models to produce the 8km resolution forecasts.

Localised projections are important as different regions experience climate change differently.

To date, about 60 per cent to 70 per cent of data has been produced for the study, and researchers will start to analyse the data next year, said Dr Dale Barker, director of the CCRS, at the third Sea Level Conference of the World Climate Research Programme yesterday.

Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu, who gave the opening address at the conference, noted that many scientists call this region the engine room of the global climate system, fuelling global atmospheric and ocean circulation.

Dr Barker said data from the regional climate projections can be used in projects in the near future, such as the newly launched Climate Impact Science Research Programme.

After September next year, the CCRS will work on a V3+, which will focus on modelling urban heat scenarios and storm surge parameters. The fourth national study, or V4, will be completed around 2027, said Dr Barker.