Sensitivity of seasonal flood simulations to regional climate model spatial resolution

Castañeda-González, Mariana; Poulin, Annie; Romero-López, Rabindranarth; Arsenault, R.J.; Brissette, François; Turcotte, Richard

doi:10.1007/s00382-019-04789-y

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…However, for this particular western U. S. region, there are examples of terrain-controlled precipitation patterns, precipitation type (snow vs. rain) and moisture transport features which should be, and in some cases clearly are, impacted by model resolution. Related RCM studies have suggested resolutions around ~ 12.5-km grid spacing better reproduce mean and extreme precipitation for almost all regions and seasons, citing that this resolution is needed to most effectively capitalize on the improved representation of orography (e.g., Prein et al 2016, Lucas-Pincher et al 2017), but that it may yet be insufficient for critical hydrologic applications (e.g., Castaneda-Gonzalez et al 2019;He et al 2019;Smiatek and Kunstmann 2019;Xu et al 2019). The results of this study support the general notion that ~ 50-km grid spacing is sufficient for resolving regional-scale effects resulting from large-scale precipitation systems that characterize the climate of many locations in the western United States, but that smaller-scale physical processes critical for determining extreme precipitation, as well as land-surface processes controlling snow-dominated regions likely require finer grid spacing.…”

Section: Interpretation In the Context Of Other Climate Projection Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cool season precipitation projections for California and the Western United States in NA-CORDEX models

et al. 2021

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Understanding future precipitation changes is critical for water supply and flood risk applications in the western United States. The North American COordinated Regional Downscaling EXperiment (NA-CORDEX) matrix of global and regional climate models at multiple resolutions (~ 50-km and 25-km grid spacings) is used to evaluate mean monthly precipitation, extreme daily precipitation, and snow water equivalent (SWE) over the western United States, with a sub-regional focus on California. Results indicate significant model spread in mean monthly precipitation in several key water-sensitive areas in both historical and future projections, but suggest model agreement on increasing daily extreme precipitation magnitudes, decreasing seasonal snowpack, and a shortening of the wet season in California in particular. While the beginning and end of the California cool season are projected to dry according to most models, the core of the cool season (December, January, February) shows an overall wetter projected change pattern. Daily cool-season precipitation extremes generally increase for most models, particularly in California in the mid-winter months. Finally, a marked projected decrease in future seasonal SWE is found across all models, accompanied by earlier dates of maximum seasonal SWE, and thus a shortening of the period of snow cover as well. Results are discussed in the context of how the diverse model membership and variable resolutions offered by the NA-CORDEX ensemble can be best leveraged by stakeholders faced with future water planning challenges.

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Section: Interpretation In the Context Of Other Climate Projection Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cool season precipitation projections for California and the Western United States in NA-CORDEX models

et al. 2021

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“…Here we only illustrate a limited application of the reversed impact chain framework. The estimation of local climate impacts requires multivariate projections with high spatial and temporal resolution (Castaneda-Gonzalez et al 2019). A promising avenue for extension are modular setups that play an increasingly important role in climate science with the developments of more and more Earth system and impact model emulators building on statistical (Beusch et al 2021;Nath et al 2022;Quilcaille et al 2022;Liu et al 2023;Tebaldi, Snyder, and Dorheim 2022) or machine learning approaches (Abramoff et al 2023) allowing for down-scaling to very high local resolution (Quesada-Chacón, Barfus, and Bernhofer 2022).…”

Section: Discussion and Outlookmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reversal of the impact chain for actionable climate information

Pfleiderer,

Frölicher,

Kropf

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Escalating impacts of climate change underscore the risk of crossing thresholds of socio-ecological systems and adaptation limits. However, limitations in the provision of actionable climate information may hinder an adequate response. Here we suggest a reversal of the traditional impact chain methodology as an end-user focused approach to link local climate risks to emission pathways. We outline the socio-economic and value judgment dimensions that can inform identification of such local risk thresholds and adaptation limits. We apply this approach to heat-mortality risks for the city of Berlin. To limit the likely maximum increase in the occurrence of heat days with expected health impacts to less than 50% compared to today, the remaining global carbon budget in 2020 is 700 Gt CO2. We argue that linking local risk threshold exceedance directly to global emission benchmarks can aid the understanding of the benefits of stringent emission reductions for societies and local decision-makers.

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“…It is an extremely simple model (its name stands for Extremely Simplified Hydrological Model in French) and includes its own PET and snow routines (Fortin & Turcotte, 2007). Nonetheless, MOHYSE and the other three models have shown overall good performance over the study domain in multiple studies (Arsenault et al, 2015; Castaneda‐Gonzalez et al, 2019). Due to the number of catchments, no distributed or physically based models were used in this database.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

NAC²H: The North American Climate Change and Hydroclimatology Data Set

Arsenault

Brissette

Chen

et al. 2020

Water Resources Research

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A data set containing hydrometeorological and hydroclimatological data for 3,540 watersheds in North America is described. The data set contains four main parts: (a) observed hydrometeorological data including daily streamflow observations, precipitation, minimum temperature, and maximum temperature; (b) 20 bias‐corrected climate model projections for two Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios and five bias correction methods; (c) hydrological model calibration parameters and simulated streamflow for 4 hydrological models, 2 objective functions, and 10 calibration parameter sets for the reference period; and (d) hydrological simulations for each of the combinations of the abovementioned elements of the climate change impact study chain, for a total of 16,000 combinations. The data set also contains simulations and bias‐corrected climate for 30‐year horizons corresponding to 1.5°C and 2°C temperature increases for a subset of the climate models, for an additional 8,000 combinations. All simulations in the reference period are also provided. Fifty‐one precomputed hydrological indices are made available for each simulation. Overall, 2.89 × 1012 years of simulations are classified, analyzed, compressed, and made available for all researchers. This data set can be used to evaluate the uncertainty of various components in the impact study chain, to establish relationships between catchment properties and hydrological response to climate change, and to evaluate the spatial distribution of hydrological change according to a multitude of hydrological indices.

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Sensitivity of seasonal flood simulations to regional climate model spatial resolution

Cited by 6 publications

References 79 publications

Cool season precipitation projections for California and the Western United States in NA-CORDEX models

Cool season precipitation projections for California and the Western United States in NA-CORDEX models

Reversal of the impact chain for actionable climate information

NAC²H: The North American Climate Change and Hydroclimatology Data Set

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Sensitivity of seasonal flood simulations to regional climate model spatial resolution

Cited by 6 publications

References 79 publications

Cool season precipitation projections for California and the Western United States in NA-CORDEX models

Cool season precipitation projections for California and the Western United States in NA-CORDEX models

Reversal of the impact chain for actionable climate information

NAC2H: The North American Climate Change and Hydroclimatology Data Set

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

NAC²H: The North American Climate Change and Hydroclimatology Data Set