Advancing climate dynamics toward reliable regional climate projections

With a scientific consensus reached regarding the anthropogenic effect on global mean temperature, developing reliable regional climate projections has emerged as a new challenge for climate science. A national project was launched in China in 2012 to study ocean's role in regional climate change. This paper starts with a review of recent advances in the study of regional climate response to global warming, followed by a description of the Chinese project including the rationale, objectives, and plan for field observations. The 15 research articles that follow in the special issue are highlighted, representing some of the initial results from the project.