This study focuses on the projections and time of emergence (TOE) for temperature extremes over Australian regions in the phase 6 of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) models. The model outputs are based on the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) from the Tier 1 experiments (i.e., SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5) in the Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP), which is compared with the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) in CMIP5 (i.e., RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). Furthermore, two large ensembles (LEs) in CMIP6 are used to investigate the effects of internal variability on the projected changes and TOE. As shown in the temporal evolution and spatial distribution, the strongest warming levels are projected under the highest future scenario and the changes for some extremes follow a “warm-get-warmer” pattern over Australia. Over subregions, tropical Australia usually shows the highest warming. Compared to the RCPs in CMIP5, the multi-model medians in SSPs are higher for some indices and commonly exhibit wider spreads, likely related to the different forcings and higher climate sensitivity in a subset of the CMIP6 models. Based on a signal-to-noise framework, we confirm that the emergence patterns differ greatly for different extreme indices and the large uncertainty in TOE can result from the inter-model ranges of both signal and noise, for which internal variability contributes to the determination of the signal. We further demonstrate that the internally-generated variations influence the noise. Our findings can provide useful information for mitigation strategies and adaptation planning over Australia.

Historical simulations of models participating in the 6th phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) are evaluated over ten Australian regions for their performance in simulating extreme temperatures. Based on two observational datasets, the Australian Water Availability Project (AWAP) and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures (BEST), we first analyze the models’ abilities in simulating the probability distributions of daily maximum and minimum temperature (TX and TN), followed by the spatial patterns and temporal variations of temperature-related extreme indices, as defined by the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI). Overall, the CMIP6 models are comparable to CMIP5, with modest improvements shown in CMIP6. Compared to CMIP5, the CMIP6 ensemble tends to have narrower interquartile model ranges for some cold extremes, as well as narrower ensemble ranges in temporal trends for most indices. Over southeast, tropical and southern south regions, both CMIP ensembles generally exhibit relatively large deficiencies in simulating temperature extremes. It is also noted that models with relatively coarse resolution sometimes show better performance, suggesting that some localized processes may need further improvement in finer-scale models. With the assessment on the probability distributions of TX and TN, the results of this study provide more robustness on the evaluation of extreme temperatures and more confidence on future projections. The findings of this study demonstrate only incremental improvement on the simulation of extremes over Australia from CMIP5 to CMIP6. However, they are useful in informing and interpreting future projections of temperature-related extremes over the region.