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| Titel |
Regional climate modeling on European scales: a joint standard evaluation of the EURO-CORDEX RCM ensemble |
| VerfasserIn |
S. Kotlarski, K. Keuler, O. B. Christensen, A. Colette, M. Déqué, A. Gobiet, K. Goergen, D. Jacob, D. Lüthi, E. van Meijgaard, G. Nikulin, C. Schär, C. Teichmann, R. Vautard, K. Warrach-Sagi, V. Wulfmeyer |
| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| ISSN |
1991-959X
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| Digitales Dokument |
URL |
| Erschienen |
In: Geoscientific Model Development ; 7, no. 4 ; Nr. 7, no. 4 (2014-07-10), S.1297-1333 |
| Datensatznummer |
250115655
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 copernicus.org/gmd-7-1297-2014.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
EURO-CORDEX is an international climate downscaling initiative that aims to
provide high-resolution climate scenarios for Europe. Here an evaluation of
the ERA-Interim-driven EURO-CORDEX regional climate model (RCM) ensemble is
presented. The study documents the performance of the individual models in
representing the basic spatiotemporal patterns of the European climate for
the period 1989–2008. Model evaluation focuses on near-surface air
temperature and precipitation, and uses the E-OBS data set as observational
reference. The ensemble consists of 17 simulations carried out by seven
different models at grid resolutions of 12 km (nine experiments) and 50 km
(eight experiments). Several performance metrics computed from monthly and
seasonal mean values are used to assess model performance over eight
subdomains of the European continent. Results are compared to those for the
ERA40-driven ENSEMBLES simulations.
The analysis confirms the ability of RCMs to capture the basic features of
the European climate, including its variability in space and time. But it
also identifies nonnegligible deficiencies of the simulations for selected
metrics, regions and seasons. Seasonally and regionally averaged temperature
biases are mostly smaller than 1.5 °C, while precipitation biases
are typically located in the ±40% range. Some bias characteristics,
such as a predominant cold and wet bias in most seasons and over most parts
of Europe and a warm and dry summer bias over southern and southeastern
Europe reflect common model biases. For seasonal mean quantities averaged
over large European subdomains, no clear benefit of an increased spatial
resolution (12 vs. 50 km) can be identified. The bias ranges of the
EURO-CORDEX ensemble mostly correspond to those of the ENSEMBLES
simulations, but some improvements in model performance can be identified
(e.g., a less pronounced southern European warm summer bias). The
temperature bias spread across different configurations of one individual
model can be of a similar magnitude as the spread across different models,
demonstrating a strong influence of the specific choices in physical
parameterizations and experimental setup on model performance. Based on a
number of simply reproducible metrics, the present study quantifies the
currently achievable accuracy of RCMs used for regional climate simulations
over Europe and provides a quality standard for future model developments. |
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