Assessment of Climate Fragility in Myanmar based on high-resolution regional climate model simulations

Myanmar is highly vulnerable to climatic changes in extreme weather such as increased precipitation and extreme temperatures. During the dry season of the last two years, Myanmar has already suffered such events. High-resolution climate model simulations are urgently needed to understand the complexity of future impacts of extreme weather and climate change in Myanmar. While global climate model simulations cover the region with a horizontal resolution of around 100 km, most regional climate models available over this region have a resolution of up to 25 km. This is still not enough to accurately assess the vulnerability to climate change for such a diverse country with complex topography, and thus, new high-resolution simulations are needed to understand the effect of climate change on regional to local scales.

We are conducting dynamically downscaled climate simulations across a large part of Myanmar using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. Downscaled climate data are generated for five simulation periods: one for the present (1981-2010) and two for each of two future periods (2031-2060 and 2071-2100), under both the intermediate-emission shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP2-4.5) and the very high-emission pathway (SSP5-8.5). The simulations are performed at a high spatial (5 km) and temporal resolution. Through these simulations, we can achieve more realistic precipitation patterns and detailed information on local precipitation and temperature extremes, considering also the daily cycle. 

We will present our preliminary findings from the downscaled modelling of weather extremes and information about heat stress and drought indices. This will provide insight into potential impacts on food security and fragility to climate change in general, both of great implications for local society and economy.