REGIONAL-ANALYSIS OF CLIMATIC SIMULATIONS OF THE CANADIAN GENERAL-CIRCULATION MODEL FOR THE TERRITORY OF QUEBEC

Current understanding of the possible nature of climatic change al the regional scale is limited by the spatial resolution of General Circul ation Models (GCM). The use of GCM outputs without correction linked t o the spatial variability of the variables can bring significant error s in their utilization at the regional scale. The potential of the Can adian GCM for regional applications in Quebec has been analysed by com parison to the climatic normals of temperature and precipitation, meas ured over the Quebec climatological network, on an annual and seasonal basis. This analysis has been undertaken with the support of a geogra phical information system (GIS) (PAMAP). in summary, a difference betw een the climatic normal and the GCM output has been estimated at 20% f or temperature and 30% for precipitation. We present an analysis of a corrected regionalized scenario for the province of Quebec of the poss ible climatic change simulated by the Canadian GCM under the hypothesi s of a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Results show an increase of the an nual average temperature of 4 degrees C for summer and 6 degrees C for winter, associated with an average increase of 80 mm (10%) in annual precipitation, reaching 25% in some regions.