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| Titel |
The influence of synoptic airflow on UK daily precipitation extremes: climate model validation |
| VerfasserIn |
D. Maraun, T. J. Osborn, H. W. Rust |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2009
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 11 (2009) |
| Datensatznummer |
250027052
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| Zusammenfassung |
| General circulation models project an increase in extreme
precipitation for the United Kingdom, with potentially devastating
impacts on flooding, acgriculture, infrastructure and society. To
implement successful adaptation strategies on local scales, climate
projections with a high resolution are required. However, on the
scales of interest, even regional climate models (RCMs) might be
considerably biased or, on sub-grid scales, might not provide
information at all.
In this study, we investigated the ability of the HadRM3 RCM to
correctly simulate daily precipitation extremes. For future
projections, it is not enough to show that time average patterns of
extreme precipitation are well represented; it is furthermore
important to show that also the main physical processes that control
extreme precipitation and might change in the future are well
reproduced. To this end, we developed a vector generalised additive
model that uses large scale atmospheric circulation indices (strength,
direction and vorticity) to predict local scale extreme
precipitation. We fitted this model to observed data from 689 rain
gauges across the United Kingdom, and to the corresponding output of
the HadRM3 model. We developed a metric to quantitatively assess the
ability of HadRM3 to reproduce the observed relationships on
gridscales, and found that the spatial patterns of these relationships
are in general well represented. However, on scales below 100km bias
correction becomes necessary. |
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