Soil moisture is one of the most important variables of the climate system as it constrains evapotranspiration, affecting the surface energy and water balance. It is of particular importance over transition regions between humid and dry climates as lower evapotranspiration rates lead to higher surface air temperatures thought strong soil moisture-temperature coupling. A new and more extensive evaluation of the surface energy balance, for the Africa Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment, is performed for hindcast simulations, where different Regional Climate Models are driven by ERA-Interim reanalysis (1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008). A new validation is carried out, with Regional Climate Models displaying a good agreement with observations. However, large biases are found over the Sahel and southern Africa for precipitation. All models tend to underestimate maximum temperature, whereas minimum temperature is overestimated for large regions. A multimodel mean ensemble is found to outperform individual models in almost all situations, representing the best estimate of present climate. The seasonal coupling strength as determined by a correlation between latent and sensible heat fluxes indicates Sahel and western Africa as strong coupling for boreal and austral summer, respectively. Also, the strong coupling areas match the transition regions identified by the intermediate values of the evaporative fraction, varying in the spatial extent. Additionally, a new soil moisture-temperature coupling metric is introduced, which highlights the regions where higher temperatures are influenced by evaporative stress. Therefore, this metric relates extreme daily maximum temperature with latent heat flux and is computed for monthly time scales, incorporating information from the recent past.

Land‐atmosphere coupling plays a crucial role in determining the evolution of weather and climate. In the current study, the full ensemble of CORDEX‐Africa climate change simulations is used to understand how strong and weak coupling regions in Africa will evolve in the future. The ability of the regional climate models to capture the coupling signal relies on a reasonable representation of near surface air temperature, precipitation, surface fluxes, and soil moisture. A thorough model evaluation reveals typical shortcomings in the representation of the African climate, in particular seasonal precipitation. The multimodel ensemble mean outperforms the individual models and is therefore used for the investigation of the land‐atmosphere coupling. This ensemble mean shows a widespread warming in Africa and changes in precipitation, such as a decrease in the Sahel during summer and an increase in western Africa during summer and autumn. The coupling analysis relies on surface fluxes, the related evaporative fraction and their correlations as well as the correlation between evaporative fraction and soil moisture. Overall, water‐limited regions that exhibit a strong land‐atmosphere coupling are projected to expand further southward in West Africa and further northward in southern Africa. This is particularly true over the Sahel during spring and summer, when the strong coupling region shifts southward, indicating a potential expansion of the semiarid and arid regions. A transition of energy limited regimes, with weak coupling, to water‐limited regimes where soil moisture plays a more important role, is projected for the end of the 21st century as drying continues.

Abstract. Over the years, higher-resolution regional climate model simulations have emerged owing to the large increase in computational resources. The 12 km resolution from the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment for the European domain (EURO-CORDEX) is a reference, which includes a larger multi-model ensemble at a continental scale while spanning at least a 130-year period. These simulations are computationally demanding but do not always reveal added value. In this study, a recently developed regular gridded dataset and a new metric for added value quantification, the distribution added value (DAV), are used to assess the precipitation of all available EURO-CORDEX hindcast (1989–2008) and historical (1971–2005) simulations. This approach enables a direct comparison between the higher-resolution regional model runs against their forcing global model or ERA-Interim reanalysis with respect to their probability density functions. This assessment is performed for the Iberian Peninsula. Overall, important gains are found for most cases, particularly in precipitation extremes. Most hindcast models reveal gains above 15 %, namely for wintertime, while for precipitation extremes values above 20 % are reached for the summer and autumn. As for the historical models, although most pairs display gains, regional models forced by two general circulation models (GCMs) reveal losses, sometimes around −5 % or lower, for the entire year. However, the spatialization of the DAV is clear in terms of added value for precipitation, particularly for precipitation extremes with gains well above 100 %.

The African continent faces several challenges and threats: high vulnerability to climate change, the fastest population increase, the lowest degree of electrification and the need for an energy transition towards renewable energies. Solar energy constitutes a viable option for addressing these issues. In a changing climate the efficient implementation of solar capacity should rely on comprehensive information about the solar resource. Here, the newest and highest resolution regional climate simulation results are used to project the future photovoltaic and concentrated solar power potentials for Africa. We show that the high potentials for solar energy will not be reduced much throughout Africa with climate change. However, the PV solar potential is projected to decrease up to about −10% in limited areas of eastern central Africa; increases are also projected to the northwest and southern Africa (up to about +5%). These changes are mostly determined by changes in solar irradiance but in certain areas the warming is a critical factor limiting PV potential.

Abstract. In the recent past, an increase in computation resources led to the development of regional climate models with increasing domains and resolutions, spanning larger temporal periods. A good example is the World Climate Research Program – Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment for the European domain (EURO-CORDEX). This set of regional models encompasses the entire European continent for a 130-year common period until the end of the 21st century, while having a 12 km horizontal resolution. Such simulations are computationally demanding, while at the same time not always showing added value. This study considers a recently proposed metric in order to assess the added value of the EURO-CORDEX hindcast (1989–2008) and historical (1971–2005) simulations for the maximum and minimum temperature over the Iberian Peninsula. This approach allows an evaluation of the higher against the driving lower resolutions relative to the performance of the whole or partial probability density functions by having an observational regular gridded dataset as a reference. Overall, the gains for maximum temperature are more relevant in comparison to minimum temperature, partially due to known problems derived from the snow–albedo–atmosphere feedback. For more local scales, areas near the coast reveal higher added value in comparison with the interior, which displays limited gains and sometimes notable detrimental effects with values around −30 %. At the same time, the added value for temperature extremes reveals a similar range, although with larger gains in coastal regions and in locations from the interior for maximum temperature, contrasting with the losses for locations in the interior of the domain for the minimum temperature.