Performance evaluation of regional climate model simulations at different spatial and temporal scales over the complex orography area of the Alpine region

Reder, Alfredo; Raffa, Mario; Montesarchio, Myriam; Mercogliano, Paola

doi:10.1007/s11069-020-03916-x

Cited by 31 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…In climate mode, the model is initialized only once at the beginning of the simulation period and only boundary conditions are given to the CP-RCM, which can express its own internal variability and biases within its domain. If we focus on precipitation, pioneer evaluation studies over parts of Europe show realistic rainfall characteristics, especially at an hourly time scale with CP-RCMs: the first multi-model study over the eastern part of the Alpine region (Prein et al 2013) and mono-model studies over the entire Alpine region (Ban et al 2014;Lind et al 2016;Reder et al 2020), Central Europe (Knist et al 2020), United Kingdom (Kendon et al 2014), southern part of Germany (Fosser et al 2015), Belgium (Brisson et al 2016), Fenno-Scandinavia (Lind et al 2020) and southeast of France (Fumière et al 2020). Leutwyler et al (2017) and Berthou et al (2020) confirm these results over a larger pan-European domain with, in particular, an improved precipitation diurnal cycle and improved summer and fall hourly precipitation distribution compared to RCMs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling Mediterranean heavy precipitation events at climate scale: an object-oriented evaluation of the CNRM-AROME convection-permitting regional climate model

et al. 2021

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Modelling the rare but high-impact Mediterranean Heavy Precipitation Events (HPEs) at climate scale remains a largely open scientific challenge. The issue is adressed here by running a 38-year-long continuous simulation of the CNRM-AROME Convection-Permitting Regional Climate Model (CP-RCM) at a 2.5 km horizontal resolution and over a large pan-Alpine domain. First, the simulation is evaluated through a basic Eulerian statistical approach via a comparison with selected high spatial and temporal resolution observational datasets. Northwestern Mediterranean fall extreme precipitation is correctly represented by CNRM-AROME at a daily scale and even better at an hourly scale, in terms of location, intensity, frequency and interannual variability, despite an underestimation of daily and hourly highest intensities above 200 mm/day and 40 mm/h, respectively. A comparison of the CP-RCM with its forcing convection-parameterised 12.5 km Regional Climate Model (RCM) demonstrates a clear added value for the CP-RCM, confirming previous studies. Secondly, an object-oriented Lagrangian approach is proposed with the implementation of a precipitating system detection and tracking algorithm, applied to the model and the reference COMEPHORE precipitation dataset for twenty fall seasons. Using French Mediterranean HPEs as objects, CNRM-AROME’s ability to represent the main characteristics of fall convective systems and tracks is highlighted in terms of number, intensity, area, duration, velocity and severity. Further, the model is able to simulate long-lasting and severe extreme fall events similar to observations. However, it fails to reproduce the precipitating systems and tracks with the highest intensities (maximum intensities above 40 mm/h) well, and the model’s tendency to overestimate the cell size increases with intensity.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling Mediterranean heavy precipitation events at climate scale: an object-oriented evaluation of the CNRM-AROME convection-permitting regional climate model

et al. 2021

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“…In a study comparing 23 CPRCM simulations, though individual CPRCMs gave contrasting results, the CPRCM ensemble means of the precipitation frequency and intensity are in much better agreement with different gridded datasets over France, Switzerland and Italy than those from the RCM ensemble (Ban et al, 2021). Reder et al (2020) found better agreement in the number of consecutive dry and wet days from a CPRCM than an RCM with observations over Switzerland, especially at higher elevations. Improvements in the precipitation frequency and intensity with CPRCMs were also found over China (Gao, Chen, & Jiang, 2020; Guo et al, 2019, 2020; Li, Furtado, et al, 2020; Yun et al, 2020), Africa (Berthou, Rowell, et al, 2019; Stratton et al, 2018) and the United States (Chang et al, 2020; Dai, Rasmussen, Liu, et al, 2020).…”

Section: Evidence Of Added Value In Cprcm Hindcast Simulationsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Convection‐permitting modeling with regional climate models: Latest developments and next steps

Lucas‐Picher

Argüeso

Brisson

et al. 2021

WIREs Climate Change

134

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Approximately 10 years ago, convection-permitting regional climate models (CPRCMs) emerged as a promising computationally affordable tool to produce fine resolution (1-4 km) decadal-long climate simulations with explicitly resolved deep convection. This explicit representation is expected to reduce climate projection uncertainty related to deep convection parameterizations found in most climate models. A recent surge in CPRCM decadal simulations over larger domains, sometimes covering continents, has led to important insights into CPRCM advantages and limitations. Furthermore, new observational gridded datasets with fine spatial and temporal ($1 km; $1 h) resolutions have leveraged additional knowledge through evaluations of the added value of CPRCMs. With an improved coordination in the frame of ongoing international initiatives, the production of ensembles of CPRCM simulations is expected to provide more robust climate projections and a better identification of their associated uncertainties. This review paper presents an overview of the methodology to produce CPRCM simulations and the latest research on the related added value in current and future climates. Impact studies that are already taking advantage of these new CPRCM simulations are highlighted. This review paper ends by proposing next steps that could be accomplished to continue exploiting the full potential of CPRCMs.

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“…Some European projects and initiative (e.g., H2020 European Climate Prediction, EUCP; Coordinated Downscaling Experiment for Flagship Pilot Study at Convection Permitting Scales, CORDEX-FPS CPS) and an increasing number of scientific works [17][18][19][20][21][22][23] have investigated the benefits of VHR simulations, showing their ability in providing a space and time consistent description of past events. In general, these studies have demonstrated as convection-permitting models provide an added value for the evaluation of the sub-daily rainfall characteristics, such as the diurnal cycle and intensity of hourly precipitation extremes [17,18,20,[24][25][26][27][28][29]. An additional improvement is represented by a more accurate characterization of interactions with complex orography [17,24].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In general, these studies have demonstrated as convection-permitting models provide an added value for the evaluation of the sub-daily rainfall characteristics, such as the diurnal cycle and intensity of hourly precipitation extremes [17,18,20,[24][25][26][27][28][29]. An additional improvement is represented by a more accurate characterization of interactions with complex orography [17,24]. Finally, refining the spatial resolution may also enable to use specific parameterizations for modelling cities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparison between One-Step and Two-Step Nesting Strategy in the Dynamical Downscaling of Regional Climate Model COSMO-CLM at 2.2 km Driven by ERA5 Reanalysis

et al. 2021

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Recently, the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) has released a new generation of reanalysis, acknowledged as ERA5, representing at the present the most plausible picture for the current climate. Although ERA5 enhancements, in some cases, its coarse spatial resolution (~31 km) could still discourage a direct use of precipitation fields. Such a gap could be faced dynamically downscaling ERA5 at convection permitting scale (resolution < 4 km). On this regard, the selection of the most appropriate nesting strategy (direct one-step against nested two-step) represents a pivotal issue for saving time and computational resources. Two questions may be raised within this context: (i) may the dynamical downscaling of ERA5 accurately represents past precipitation patterns? and (ii) at what extent may the direct nesting strategy performances be adequately for this scope? This work addresses these questions evaluating two ERA5-driven experiments at ~2.2 km grid spacing over part of the central Europe, run using the regional climate model COSMO-CLM with different nesting strategies, for the period 2007–2011. Precipitation data are analysed at different temporal and spatial scales with respect to gridded observational datasets (i.e., E-OBS and RADKLIM-RW) and existing reanalysis products (i.e., ERA5-Land and UERRA). The present work demonstrates that the one-step experiment tendentially outperforms the two-step one when there is no spectral nudging, providing results at different spatial and temporal scales in line with the other existing reanalysis products. However, the results can be highly model and event dependent as some different aspects might need to be considered (i.e., the nesting strategies) during the configuration phase of the climate experiments. For this reason, a clear and consolidated recommendation on this topic cannot be stated. Such a level of confidence could be achieved in future works by increasing the number of cities and events analysed. Nevertheless, these promising results represent a starting point for the optimal experimental configuration assessment, in the frame of future climate studies.

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Performance evaluation of regional climate model simulations at different spatial and temporal scales over the complex orography area of the Alpine region

Cited by 31 publications

References 55 publications

Modelling Mediterranean heavy precipitation events at climate scale: an object-oriented evaluation of the CNRM-AROME convection-permitting regional climate model

Modelling Mediterranean heavy precipitation events at climate scale: an object-oriented evaluation of the CNRM-AROME convection-permitting regional climate model

Convection‐permitting modeling with regional climate models: Latest developments and next steps

A Comparison between One-Step and Two-Step Nesting Strategy in the Dynamical Downscaling of Regional Climate Model COSMO-CLM at 2.2 km Driven by ERA5 Reanalysis

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