Advances in regional climate science in South America and Central America during the CORDEX Era

Latin America and the Caribbean have made major advances in regional climate modeling in the last 15 years, thanks to scientific initiatives in their different countries and their participation in the Coordinated Regional Downscaling EXperiment of the World Climate Research Program (CORDEX/WCRP). These efforts allowed North/South international cooperation from two CORDEX domains in the region: South America (SAM) and Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean (CAM). Many climate modeling activities and networking were developed in these two domains through capacity building workshops and project meetings on common topics of interest promoted by CORDEX. As a result, numerous studies have been published by scientists from these two domains focused on regional process understanding, climate impacts on different sectors, and assessments of the present state of the regional climate and their projected changes during the 21st century. This article reviews and discusses these topics and presents some challenges for the future advancement of regional climate modeling in CAM and SAM.