Simulation of Temperature Extremes Over West Africa With MPAS

Abstract

A large ensemble of 51 simulations with the Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) has been applied to assess its ability to reproduce extreme temperatures and heat waves in the area of West Africa. With its global approach the model avoids transition errors influencing the performance of limited area climate models. The MPAS simulations were driven with sea surface temperature (SST) and sea ice extent as the only boundary condition. The results reveal moderate cold biases in the range from −0.6° to −0.9°C for the daily mean temperature and −1.2° to −2.0°C for the area mean of the daily maximum temperature. The bias in the number of tropical nights ranges from +3 to −10 days. An underestimation by up to 50% is also present regarding the number of summer days. The heat wave duration index is underestimated regionally by 10%–60%. MPAS simulations are generally closer to the reanalysis results than they are to the observational reference. The results from long term runs and from short term runs with selected SST years are similar. Shortcomings in the reproduction of the temperature and precipitation indices found in the present investigation indicate that the global MPAS approach does provide a fidelity similar to that of the regional climate models.

Impact of parameterization schemes on temperature simulation over China using the variable-resolution MPAS-A

“…In addition, MPAS has also been used for extreme weather (Zhao et al 2019;Tanimoune et al 2023), and of tropical cyclone (Davis et al 2016;Michaelis and Lackmann 2019;Zhang et al 2019;Lui et al 2020b;Donkin et al 2023) simulations. However, previous studies have focused more on the ability of MPAS model to produce meteorological elements at low and mid-latitudes, and have tended to simulate individual cases for short periods.…”