Abstract. Many climate extremes, including heatwaves and heavy
precipitation events, are projected to worsen under climate change, with
important impacts for society. Future projections required for adaptation
are often based on climate model simulations. Given finite resources,
trade-offs must be made concerning model resolution, ensemble size, and level
of model complexity. Here we focus on the resolution component. A given
resolution can be achieved over a region using either global climate models
(GCMs) or at lower cost using regional climate models (RCMs) that
dynamically downscale coarser GCMs. Both approaches to increasing resolution
may better capture small-scale processes and features (downscaling effect),
but increased GCM resolution may also improve the representation of the
large-scale atmospheric circulation (upscaling effect). The size of this
upscaling effect is therefore important for deciding modelling strategies.
Here we evaluate the benefits of increased model resolution for both global
and regional climate models for simulating temperature, precipitation, and
wind extremes over Europe at resolutions that could currently be
realistically used for coordinated sets of climate projections at the
pan-European scale. First we examine the benefits of regional downscaling by
comparing EURO-CORDEX simulations at 12.5 and 50 km resolution to their
coarser CMIP5 driving simulations. Secondly, we compare global-scale
HadGEM3-A simulations at three resolutions (130, 60, and 25 km). Finally, we
separate out resolution-dependent differences for HadGEM3-A into downscaling
and upscaling components using a circulation analogue technique. Results
suggest limited benefits of increased resolution for heatwaves, except in
reducing hot biases over mountainous regions. Precipitation extremes are
sensitive to resolution, particularly over complex orography, with larger
totals and heavier tails of the distribution at higher resolution,
particularly in the CORDEX vs. CMIP5 analysis. CMIP5 models underestimate
precipitation extremes, whilst CORDEX simulations overestimate compared to
E-OBS, particularly at 12.5 km, but results are sensitive to the
observational dataset used, with the MESAN reanalysis giving higher totals
and heavier tails than E-OBS. Wind extremes are somewhat stronger and
heavier tailed at higher resolution, except in coastal regions where large
coastal grid boxes spread strong ocean winds further over land. The
circulation analogue analysis suggests that differences with resolution for
the HadGEM3-A GCM are primarily due to downscaling effects.