Assessing gridded observations for daily precipitation extremes in the Alps with a focus on northwest Italy

Turco, Marco; Zollo, Alessandra Lucia; Ronchi, Christian; Luigi, Chiara De; Mercogliano, Paola

doi:10.5194/nhess-13-1457-2013

Cited by 41 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The election of this gridded data set is based on the abundant scientific literature using E-OBS for the evaluation of regional climate models (e.g., Costa et al, 2012;Jiménez-Guerrero et al, 2013;Turco et al, 2013;Ceglar et al, 2014, among many others). However, several authors highlight the E-OBS limitations.…”

Section: Observational Databasementioning

confidence: 99%

Regional effects of atmospheric aerosols on temperature: an evaluation of an ensemble of online coupled models

Baró¹,

Palacios-Peña²,

Baklanov³

et al. 2017

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. The climate effect of atmospheric aerosols is associated with their influence on the radiative budget of the Earth due to the direct aerosol-radiation interactions (ARIs) and indirect effects, resulting from aerosol-cloud-radiation interactions (ACIs). Online coupled meteorology-chemistry models permit the description of these effects on the basis of simulated atmospheric aerosol concentrations, although there is still some uncertainty associated with the use of these models. Thus, the objective of this work is to assess whether the inclusion of atmospheric aerosol radiative feedbacks of an ensemble of online coupled models improves the simulation results for maximum, mean and minimum temperature at 2 m over Europe. The evaluated models outputs originate from EuMetChem COST Action ES1004 simulations for Europe, differing in the inclusion (or omission) of ARI and ACI in the various models. The cases studies cover two important atmospheric aerosol episodes over Europe in the year 2010: (i) a heat wave event and a forest fire episode (July-August 2010) and (ii) a more humid episode including a Saharan desert dust outbreak in October 2010. The simulation results are evaluated against observational data from the E-OBS gridded database. The results indicate that, although there is only a slight improvement in the bias of the simulation results when including the radiative feedbacks, the spatiotemporal variability and correlation coefficients are improved for the cases under study when atmospheric aerosol radiative effects are included.

show abstract

Section: Observational Databasementioning

confidence: 99%

Regional effects of atmospheric aerosols on temperature: an evaluation of an ensemble of online coupled models

Baró¹,

Palacios-Peña²,

Baklanov³

et al. 2017

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Flaounas et al (2012) validated the E-OBS dataset in the Mediterranean region and found that those data must be used with care in complex environments such as coastal areas and mountainous regions. Turco et al (2013b) compared three different gridded datasets in the greater Alpine region (E-OBS and two local grids) and found that specific regional products are often more trustworthy than E-OBS. Herrera et al (2012) compared Spain02 and E-OBS in Spain and found that the station density severely affects the results.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Validation of a new SAFRAN-based gridded precipitation product for Spain and comparisons to Spain02 and ERA-Interim

Quintana-Seguí

Turco

Herrera

et al. 2017

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Offline land surface model (LSM) simulations are useful for studying the continental hydrological cycle. Because of the nonlinearities in the models, the results are very sensitive to the quality of the meteorological forcing; thus, high-quality gridded datasets of screen-level meteorological variables are needed. Precipitation datasets are particularly difficult to produce due to the inherent spatial and temporal heterogeneity of that variable. They do, however, have a large impact on the simulations, and it is thus necessary to carefully evaluate their quality in great detail. This paper reports the quality of two high-resolution precipitation datasets for Spain at the daily time scale: the new SAFRAN-based dataset and Spain02. SAFRAN is a meteorological analysis system that was designed to force LSMs and has recently been extended to the entirety of Spain for a long period of time (1979/1980-2013/2014). Spain02 is a daily precipitation dataset for Spain and was created mainly to validate regional climate models. In addition, ERA-Interim is included in the comparison to show the differences between local high-resolution and global lowresolution products. The study compares the different precipitation analyses with rain gauge data and assesses their temporal and spatial similarities to the observations.The validation of SAFRAN with independent data shows that this is a robust product. SAFRAN and Spain02 have very similar scores, although the latter slightly surpasses the former. The scores are robust with altitude and throughout the year, save perhaps in summer when a diminished skill is observed. As expected, SAFRAN and Spain02 perform better than ERA-Interim, which has difficulty capturing the effects of the relief on precipitation due to its low resolution. However, ERA-Interim reproduces spells remarkably well in contrast to the low skill shown by the high-resolution products. The high-resolution gridded products overestimate the number of precipitation days, which is a problem that affects SAFRAN more than Spain02 and is likely caused by the interpolation method. Both SAFRAN and Spain02 underestimate high precipitation events, but SAFRAN does so more than Spain02. The overestimation of low precipitation events and the underestimation of intense episodes will probably have hydrological consequences once the data are used to force a land surface or hydrological model.

show abstract

“…This is especially true for precipitation data sets in complex orography areas like the Alps: in fact, the analysis performed by Turco et al [2013] showed that E-OBS cannot be used for spatial climatology of extreme precipitation indices over the Alpine region. Moreover, the spatial resolution of CRU and E-OBS data sets (respectively, about 60 and 28 km) could not be adequate to properly validate precipitation fields from climate simulations at less than 10 km resolution.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance evaluation of high-resolution regional climate simulations in the Alpine space and analysis of extreme events

Montesarchio

Zollo

Bucchignani

et al. 2014

J. Geophys. Res. Atmos.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study aimed to assess the capabilities of high-resolution simulations in reproducing the main features of the climate in the complex topography region of the Alps for the period 1971-2000. This is to provide a reliable tool for impact studies on local scale. Two simulations, driven by ERA-40 Reanalysis, have been carried out, respectively, at spatial resolutions of 0.125°and 0.0715°with the regional climate model COSMO-CLM. The model response has been analyzed in terms of 2 m temperature and precipitation, and comparisons with available observations have been carried out. A number of climate indices have also been analyzed, widely adopted to monitor changes in extreme climate events. Finally, the effects of increasing spatial resolution have also been investigated. The model at high spatial resolution (0.0715°) provides a satisfactory representation of temperature. The simulated precipitation patterns are also improved due to the high model resolution that allows reproducing localized precipitation phenomena with a medium-high error, especially where summer thunderstorms over the complex topography of the Alpine region occurs.

show abstract

Assessing gridded observations for daily precipitation extremes in the Alps with a focus on northwest Italy

Cited by 41 publications

References 20 publications

Regional effects of atmospheric aerosols on temperature: an evaluation of an ensemble of online coupled models

Regional effects of atmospheric aerosols on temperature: an evaluation of an ensemble of online coupled models

Validation of a new SAFRAN-based gridded precipitation product for Spain and comparisons to Spain02 and ERA-Interim

Performance evaluation of high-resolution regional climate simulations in the Alpine space and analysis of extreme events

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About