Regional climate modeling has tremendously grown in the last decades, encompassing a large and diverse scientific community. Regional climate models (RCMs) are run on a wide range of resolutions, from a few to a few tens of km, and applications, from process studies to past and future climate simulations. In addition, the Coordinated Regional climate Downscaling EXperiment (CORDEX) has been recently implemented to increase international coordination among different research efforts and produce large ensembles of high resolution climate projections over regiona worldwide. Specifically, the Phase II CORDEX framework has been launched, including a CORDEX-CORE initiative aimed at generating a coherent set of projections over all CORDEX domains at increased resolution (12-25 km) and a number of Flagship Pilot Studies (FPSs) addressing specific research challenges, such as convection permitting modeling. These two initiatives are also intended to provide a strong input to the upcoming sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The session seeks for contributions on:
1) New developments in RCM research
2) Key methodological issues, such as Added Value and metrics for model assessment
3) Application of RCMs for different scientific challenges, e.g. extreme events, the hydrologic cycle, effect of land-use change and aerosols
4) Contributions to the CORDEX CORE and FPS initiatives
5) Use of RCMs to provide multi-model ensemble-based climate information for Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation (VIA) studies)