Comparing precipitation bias correction methods for high-resolution regional climate simulations using COSMO-CLM

2013 ◽  
Vol 114 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 511-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Gutjahr ◽  
Günther Heinemann
2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (12) ◽  
pp. 2617-2632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qifen Yuan ◽  
Thordis L. Thorarinsdottir ◽  
Stein Beldring ◽  
Wai Kwok Wong ◽  
Shaochun Huang ◽  
...  

AbstractIn applications of climate information, coarse-resolution climate projections commonly need to be downscaled to a finer grid. One challenge of this requirement is the modeling of subgrid variability and the spatial and temporal dependence at the finer scale. Here, a postprocessing procedure for temperature projections is proposed that addresses this challenge. The procedure employs statistical bias correction and stochastic downscaling in two steps. In the first step, errors that are related to spatial and temporal features of the first two moments of the temperature distribution at model scale are identified and corrected. Second, residual space–time dependence at the finer scale is analyzed using a statistical model, from which realizations are generated and then combined with an appropriate climate change signal to form the downscaled projection fields. Using a high-resolution observational gridded data product, the proposed approach is applied in a case study in which projections of two regional climate models from the Coordinated Downscaling Experiment–European Domain (EURO-CORDEX) ensemble are bias corrected and downscaled to a 1 km × 1 km grid in the Trøndelag area of Norway. A cross-validation study shows that the proposed procedure generates results that better reflect the marginal distributional properties of the data product and have better consistency in space and time when compared with empirical quantile mapping.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 3175-3196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathieu Vrac

Abstract. Climate simulations often suffer from statistical biases with respect to observations or reanalyses. It is therefore common to correct (or adjust) those simulations before using them as inputs into impact models. However, most bias correction (BC) methods are univariate and so do not account for the statistical dependences linking the different locations and/or physical variables of interest. In addition, they are often deterministic, and stochasticity is frequently needed to investigate climate uncertainty and to add constrained randomness to climate simulations that do not possess a realistic variability. This study presents a multivariate method of rank resampling for distributions and dependences (R2D2) bias correction allowing one to adjust not only the univariate distributions but also their inter-variable and inter-site dependence structures. Moreover, the proposed R2D2 method provides some stochasticity since it can generate as many multivariate corrected outputs as the number of statistical dimensions (i.e., number of grid cell  ×  number of climate variables) of the simulations to be corrected. It is based on an assumption of stability in time of the dependence structure – making it possible to deal with a high number of statistical dimensions – that lets the climate model drive the temporal properties and their changes in time. R2D2 is applied on temperature and precipitation reanalysis time series with respect to high-resolution reference data over the southeast of France (1506 grid cell). Bivariate, 1506-dimensional and 3012-dimensional versions of R2D2 are tested over a historical period and compared to a univariate BC. How the different BC methods behave in a climate change context is also illustrated with an application to regional climate simulations over the 2071–2100 period. The results indicate that the 1d-BC basically reproduces the climate model multivariate properties, 2d-R2D2 is only satisfying in the inter-variable context, 1506d-R2D2 strongly improves inter-site properties and 3012d-R2D2 is able to account for both. Applications of the proposed R2D2 method to various climate datasets are relevant for many impact studies. The perspectives of improvements are numerous, such as introducing stochasticity in the dependence itself, questioning its stability assumption, and accounting for temporal properties adjustment while including more physics in the adjustment procedures.


2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 370-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Andrys ◽  
Thomas J. Lyons ◽  
Jatin Kala

AbstractThe authors evaluate a 30-yr (1981–2010) Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) Model regional climate simulation over the southwest of Western Australia (SWWA), a region with a Mediterranean climate, using ERA-Interim boundary conditions. The analysis assesses the spatial and temporal characteristics of climate extremes, using a selection of climate indices, with an emphasis on metrics that are relevant for forestry and agricultural applications. Two nested domains at 10- and 5-km resolution are examined, with the higher-resolution simulation resolving convection explicitly. Simulation results are compared with a high-resolution, gridded observational dataset that provides daily rainfall, minimum temperatures, and maximum temperatures. Results show that, at both resolutions, the model is able to simulate the daily, seasonal, and annual variation of temperature and precipitation well, including extreme events. The higher-resolution domain displayed significant performance gains in simulating dry-season convective precipitation, rainfall around complex terrain, and the spatial distribution of frost conditions. The high-resolution domain was, however, influenced by grid-edge effects in the southwestern margin, which reduced the ability of the domain to represent frontal rainfall along the coastal region. On the basis of these results, the authors feel confident in using the WRF Model for regional climate simulations for the SWWA, including studies that focus on the spatial and temporal representation of climate extremes. This study provides a baseline climatological description at a high resolution that can be used for impact studies and will also provide a benchmark for climate simulations driven by general circulation models.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 5687-5737 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Tramblay ◽  
D. Ruelland ◽  
S. Somot ◽  
R. Bouaicha ◽  
E. Servat

Abstract. In the framework of the international CORDEX program, new regional climate model (RCM) simulations at high spatial resolutions are becoming available for the Mediterranean region (Med-CORDEX initiative). This study provides the first evaluation for hydrological impact studies of these high-resolution simulations. Different approaches are compared to analyze the climate change impacts on the hydrology of a catchment located in North Morocco, using a high-resolution RCM (ALADIN-Climate) from the Med-CORDEX initiative at two different spatial resolutions (50 km and 12 km) and for two different Radiative Concentration Pathway scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). The main issues addressed in the present study are: (i) what is the impact of increased RCM resolution on present-climate hydrological simulations and on future projections? (ii) Are the bias-correction of the RCM model and the parameters of the hydrological model stationary and transferable to different climatic conditions? (iii) What is the climate and hydrological change signal based on the new Radiative Concentration Pathways scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5)? Results indicate that high resolution simulations at 12 km better reproduce the seasonal patterns, the seasonal distributions and the extreme events of precipitation. The parameters of the hydrological model, calibrated to reproduce runoff at the monthly time step over the 1984–2010 period, do not show a strong variability between dry and wet calibration periods in a differential split-sample test. However the bias correction of precipitation by quantile-matching does not give satisfactory results in validation using the same differential split-sample testing method. Therefore a quantile-perturbation method that does not rely on any stationarity assumption and produces ensembles of perturbed series of precipitation was introduced. The climate change signal under scenarios 4.5 and 8.5 indicates a decrease of respectively −30% to −57% in surface runoff for the mid-term (2041–2062), when for the same period the projections for precipitation are ranging between −15% and −19% and for temperature between +1.28°C and +1.87°C.


Author(s):  
G. Schädler ◽  
H.-J. Panitz ◽  
E. Christner ◽  
H. Feldmann ◽  
M. Karremann ◽  
...  

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