NDLI: The simulation of European heat waves from an ensemble of regional climate models within the EURO-CORDEX project

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Vautard, Robert Gobiet, Andreas Jacob, Daniela Belda, Michal Colette, Augustin Déqué, Michel Fernández, Jesús García Díez, Markel Goergen, Klaus Güttler, Ivan Halenka, Tomáš Karacostas, Theodore Katragkou, Eleni Keuler, Klaus Kotlarski, Sven Mayer, Stephanie Meijgaard, Erik Nikulin, Grigory Patarčić, Mirta Scicca, John Sobolowski, Stefan Suklitsch, Martin Teichmann, Claas Warrach Sagi, Kirsten Wulfmeyer, Volker Yiou, Pascal
Copyright Year	2013
Abstract	The ability of a large ensemble of regional climate models to accurately simulate heat waves at the regional scale of Europe was evaluated. Within the EURO-CORDEX project, several state-of-the art models, including non-hydrostatic meso-scale models, were run for an extended time period (20 years) at high resolution (12 km), over a large domain allowing for the first time the simultaneous representation of atmospheric phenomena over a large range of spatial scales. Eight models were run in this configuration, and thirteen models were run at a classical resolution of 50 km. The models were driven with the same boundary conditions, the ERA-Interim re-analysis, and except for one simulation, no observations were assimilated in the inner domain. Results, which are compared with daily temperature and precipitation observations (ECA&D and E-OBS data sets) show that, even forced by the same re-analysis, the ensemble exhibits a large spread. A preliminary analysis of the sources of spread, using in particular simulations of the same model with different parameterizations, shows that the simulation of hot temperature is primarily sensitive to the convection and the microphysics schemes, which affect incoming energy and the Bowen ratio. Further, most models exhibit an overestimation of summertime temperature extremes in Mediterranean regions and an underestimation over Scandinavia. Even after bias removal, the simulated heat wave events were found to be too persistent, but a higher resolution reduced this deficiency. The amplitude of events as well as the variability beyond the 90th percentile threshold were found to be too strong in almost all simulations and increasing resolution did not generally improve this deficiency. Resolution increase was also shown to induce large-scale 90th percentile warming or cooling for some models, with beneficial or detrimental effects on the overall biases. Even though full causality cannot be established on the basis of this evaluation work, the drivers of such regional differences were shown to be linked to changes in precipitation due to resolution changes, affecting the energy partitioning. Finally, the inter-annual sequence of hot summers over central/southern Europe was found to be fairly well simulated in most experiments despite an overestimation of the number of hot days and of the variability. The accurate simulation of inter-annual variability for a few models is independent of the model bias. This indicates that internal variability of high summer temperatures should not play a major role in controlling inter-annual variability. Despite some improvements, especially along coastlines, the analyses conducted here did not allow us to generally conclude that a higher resolution is clearly beneficial for a correct representation of heat waves by regional climate models. Even though local-scale feedbacks should be better represented at high resolution, combinations of parameterizations have to be improved or adapted accordingly.
Starting Page	2555
Ending Page	2575
Page Count	21
File Format	PDF
ISSN	09307575
Journal	Climate Dynamics
Volume Number	41
Issue Number	9-10
e-ISSN	14320894
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Publisher Date	2013-04-05
Publisher Place	Berlin, Heidelberg
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Regional climate modeling Heat waves Model evaluation Climate projection EURO-CORDEX Geophysics/Geodesy Climatology Oceanography
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Atmospheric Science

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

An ensemble climate projection for Africa

Regional climate modeling on European scales: a joint standard evaluation of the EURO-CORDEX RCM ensemble

Evaluation of an ensemble of regional climate model simulations over South America driven by the ERA-Interim reanalysis: model performance and uncertainties

Spatial and temporal characteristics of heat waves over Central Europe in an ensemble of regional climate model simulations

Evaluation of the Large EURO-CORDEX Regional Climate Model Ensemble

Daily precipitation statistics in a EURO-CORDEX RCM ensemble: added value of raw and bias-corrected high-resolution simulations

Future heat waves over the Mediterranean from an Euro-CORDEX regional climate model ensemble.

Projection of temperature and heat waves for Africa with an ensemble of CORDEX Regional Climate Models

Evaluation of multiple regional climate models for summer climate extremes over East Asia

The simulation of European heat waves from an ensemble of regional climate models within the EURO-CORDEX project

Similar Documents

An ensemble climate projection for Africa

Regional climate modeling on European scales: a joint standard evaluation of the EURO-CORDEX RCM ensemble

Evaluation of an ensemble of regional climate model simulations over South America driven by the ERA-Interim reanalysis: model performance and uncertainties

Spatial and temporal characteristics of heat waves over Central Europe in an ensemble of regional climate model simulations

Evaluation of the Large EURO-CORDEX Regional Climate Model Ensemble

Daily precipitation statistics in a EURO-CORDEX RCM ensemble: added value of raw and bias-corrected high-resolution simulations

Future heat waves over the Mediterranean from an Euro-CORDEX regional climate model ensemble.

Projection of temperature and heat waves for Africa with an ensemble of CORDEX Regional Climate Models

Evaluation of multiple regional climate models for summer climate extremes over East Asia

The simulation of European heat waves from an ensemble of regional climate models within the EURO-CORDEX project