Summer maximum temperature over the gulf cooperation council states in the twenty-first century: multimodel simulations overview

Abstract The present study analyzes the Survivability for a Fit Human Threshold (SFHT) maximum temperature during the summer (June–August) over the six Middle Eastern countries known as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in the twenty-first century. An ensemble of three dynamically downscaled global climate models available from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) under the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 emission scenarios is used to analyze the future climate (2006–2099) over the region. The ground-truth air temperature for ten major cities across the GCC countries is utilized for model evaluation and to estimate the model-simulated temperature biases. Both positive and negative biases found during the present climate (1976–2005) are used to adjust the future temperature changes. These adjustments show that the summer maximum temperature is likely to increase continuously for most cities in the GCC countries at the rate of about 0.2 °C (0.6 °C) per decade under RCP4.5 (RCP8.5) for the future period (2020–2099), which is significant at the 99% confidence level. For RCP8.5, the adjusted summer maximum temperature may exceed the SFHT limit of 42 °C in five capital cities of the GCC states and four major cities of Saudi Arabia. The projections based on adjusted values indicate that the average summer maximum temperature should not exceed 52 °C in any city investigated by the end of the twenty-first century. The daily maximum temperature is projected to exceed 55 °C in some cities in the GCC region by the end of the twenty-first century under a business-as-usual scenario that seems to be unrealistic if the biases are not taken into account. It is highly recommended that the GCC states should coordinate their efforts to respond appropriately to these projections using large ensembles of multimodel simulations while allowing for the associated uncertainty.