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Title: A multimodel intercomparison of resolution effects on precipitation: simulations and theory

Journal Article · · Climate Dynamics
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [4];  [5];  [1]
  1. Univ. of Delaware, Newark, DE (United States). Dept. of Geography
  2. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Earth Sciences Division
  3. American Univ. of Paris, Paris (France). Dept. of Computer Science, Mathematics and Environmental Science
  4. International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste (Italy). Earth System Physics Section
  5. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Earth Sciences Division; Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences
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An ensemble of six pairs of RCM experiments performed at 25 and 50 km for the period 1961–2000 over a large European domain is examined in order to evaluate the effects of resolution on the simulation of daily precipitation statistics. Application of the non-parametric two-sample Kolmorgorov–Smirnov test, which tests for differences in the location and shape of the probability distributions of two samples, shows that the distribution of daily precipitation differs between the pairs of simulations over most land areas in both summer and winter, with the strongest signal over southern Europe. Two-dimensional histograms reveal that precipitation intensity increases with resolution over almost the entire domain in both winter and summer. In addition, the 25 km simulations have more dry days than the 50 km simulations. The increase in dry days with resolution is indicative of an improvement in model performance at higher resolution, while the more intense precipitation exceeds observed values. The systematic increase in precipitation extremes with resolution across all models suggests that this response is fundamental to model formulation. Simple theoretical arguments suggest that fluid continuity, combined with the emergent scaling properties of the horizontal wind field, results in an increase in resolved vertical transport as grid spacing decreases. This increase in resolution-dependent vertical mass flux then drives an intensification of convergence and resolvable-scale precipitation as grid spacing decreases. In conclusion, this theoretical result could help explain the increasingly, and often anomalously, large stratiform contribution to total rainfall observed with increasing resolution in many regional and global models.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; 036946; GOCE-CT-2003-505539
OSTI ID:
1435071
Journal Information:
Climate Dynamics, Vol. 47, Issue 7-8; ISSN 0930-7575
Publisher:
Springer-VerlagCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 47 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (9)

Climate change scenarios of convective and large-scale precipitation in the Czech Republic based on EURO-CORDEX data: CLIMATE CHANGE SCENARIOS OF CONVECTIVE AND LARGE-SCALE PRECIPITATION journal August 2016
The atmospheric hydrologic cycle in the ACME v0.3 model journal July 2017
Improved partial trend method to detect rainfall trends in Hainan Island journal January 2019
The effect of modeling choices on updating intensity-duration-frequency curves and stormwater infrastructure designs for climate change journal January 2020
A quantitative method to decompose SWE differences between regional climate models and reanalysis datasets journal November 2019
Are atmospheric updrafts a key to unlocking climate forcing and sensitivity? journal January 2016
Modeling extreme precipitation over East China with a global variable-resolution modeling framework (MPASv5.2): impacts of resolution and physics journal January 2019
Are atmospheric updrafts a key to unlocking climate forcing and sensitivity? text January 2016
A process study on thinning of Arctic winter cirrus clouds with high‐resolution ICON‐ART simulations text January 2019

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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Regional climate modeling
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