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| Titel |
How well do ENSEMBLES 25km resolution RCMs represent the influence of the large scale atmospheric circulation on UK precipitation extremes? |
| VerfasserIn |
Douglas Maraun, Timothy Osborn, Henning Rust |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2010
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 12 (2010) |
| Datensatznummer |
250044187
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Extreme precipitation is a major natural hazard in the United
Kingdom. Local communities require reliable high resolution estimates
of future changes in the magnitude of precipitation extremes to adapt
to potential impacts. In this context, it is crucial how state of the
art regional climate models (RCMs) simulate the temporal variability
of precipitation extremes. Instead of only evaluating the variability
itself, we propose to also evaluate the relationships with large scale
processes that control the variability of extreme precipitation.
In particular, we model the monthly maxima of daily precipitation
using a generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution, and represent
the influence of the atmospheric circulation by airflow strength,
vorticity and direction, which act as covariates upon the parameters
of the GEV distribution. This statistical model is applied to gridded
observational data as well as to control climate simulations from a
range of 25km resolution RCMs used in the EU ENSEMBLES project.
Based upon these analyses, we evaluate the RCM representation of
relationships between the synoptic scale atmospheric circulation and
local precipitation extremes. Compared to evaluating the
representation of variability alone, evaluating such physically
motivated relationships increases confidence in the simulation of
future variability of precipitation extremes. |
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