Do CMIP6 GCMs Outperform Cordex RCMs in Simulating Near-Surface Wind Speed Climate Over The Indian Ocean?

The reliable future wind climate projections are important in assessing the impact of climate change on the wind energy sector and wind-driven processes (ocean-wave energy, evapotranspiration and air-pollution modelling). The future wind speed projections are available from several climate models. Moreover, the climate model outputs are uncertain and one of the model uncertainty arises because of assumptions, simplifications and parameterizations made in the climate models. It can be minimized by choosing a reliable future projected wind from a climate model as suggested in this study. The current study provides the information on the performance of thirty-three Global Climate Models (GCMs) of sixth phase Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) and sixteen Regional Climate Models (RCMs) of Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) in simulating historical (1979-2005) near-surface wind speed at diverse climate variable scales (daily, monthly, seasonal and annual) over the Indian Ocean (IO) relative to fifth-generation European Research Agency reanalysis dataset. From the intercomparison of climate models, it is found that most of the CMIP6 GCMs are significantly performing better than high-resolution CORDEX RCMs over IO. The climate models EC-EARTH-3-CC, MPI-ESM1-2-HR, EC-EARTH-3-VEG and AWI-CM-1-1-MR are identified as the best-performing climate models and MPI-M-MPI-ESM-MR (RegCM4-4) and NCC-NorESM1-M (RCA4) CORDEX RCMs as poor-performing climate models over IO. This paper will aid in the selection of an appropriate climate model for wind dependent climate change impact assessment and will result in reducing model-based uncertainty.