Climate Change and Its Impact on Rainfall

Abstract

This paper reviews the climate change impact on rainfall as well as extreme events occurrences. The global extreme weather contributes to the uncertainties of the climate trend and water scarcity problems to the whole world. Thus, numerical models such as General Circulation Models (GCMs) have been developed to simulate the response of the global climate system to the expected increment of the greenhouse gases concentrations. However, the GCM cannot be directly applied to climate change impact studies, hence downscaling is needed. A large number of downscaling methods are available but there is no universal method exists at present that performs best for all conditions, depending on the application and this remains a subject of investigation. Therefore, this paper compares the performances among statistical and dynamical downscaling models that have been applied by different researchers in various purposes. It can be concluded that the statistical downscaling has been widely used and able to provide reliable climate projected results especially for Malaysia’s climate variables. This review is very significant especially to the policy maker in deciding the reliable climatic methods for the long term planning and management of water resources. Besides, the reliable projected rainfall will be very beneficial in estimating water availability and water resource policy.