Nikolina Ban

Evaluation of the convection‐resolving regional climate modeling approach in decade‐long simulations

The uncertainties in current global and regional climate model integrations are partly related to the representation of clouds, moist convection, and complex topography, thus motivating the use of convection-resolving models. On climate time scales, convection-resolving methods have been used for process studies, but application to long-term scenario simulations has been very limited. Here we present a convection-resolving simulation for a 10 yearlong period (1998–2007) integrated with the Consortium for Small-Scale Modeling in Climate Mode model. Two one-way nested grids are used with horizontal resolutions of 2.2 km for a convection-resolving model (CRM2) on an extended Alpine domain (1100 km × 1100 km) and 12 km for a convection-parametrizing model (CPM12) covering Europe. CPM12 is driven by lateral boundary conditions from the ERA-Interim reanalysis. Validation is conducted against high-resolution surface data. The CRM2 model strongly improves the simulation of the diurnal cycles of precipitation and temperature, despite an enhanced warm bias and a tendency for the overestimation of precipitation over the Alps. The CPM12 model has a poor diurnal cycle associated with the use of parameterized convection. The assessment of extreme precipitation events reveals that both models adequately represent the frequency-intensity distributions for daylong events in summer, but large differences occur for hourly precipitation. The CPM12 model underestimates the frequency of heavy hourly events, while CRM2 shows good agreement with observations in the summer season. We also present results on the scaling of precipitation extremes with local daily mean temperatures. In accordance with observations, CRM2 exhibits adiabatic scaling for intermediate hourly events (90th percentile) and superadiabatic scaling for extreme hourly events (99th and 99.9th percentiles) during the summer season. The CPM12 model partly reproduces this scaling as well. The excellent performance of CRM2 in representing hourly precipitation events in terms of intensity and scaling is highly encouraging, as this addresses a previously untested (and untuned) model capability.

Heavy precipitation in a changing climate: Does short‐term summer precipitation increase faster?

Climate models project that heavy precipitation events intensify with climate change. It is generally accepted that extreme day-long events will increase at a rate of about 6–7% per degree warming, consistent with the Clausius-Clapeyron relation. However, recent studies suggest that subdaily (e.g., hourly) precipitation extremes may increase at about twice this rate. Conventional climate models are not suited to assess such events, due to the limited spatial resolution and the need to parametrize convective precipitation (i.e., thunderstorms and rain showers). Here we employ a convection-resolving model using a horizontal grid spacing of 2.2 km across an extended region covering the Alps and its larger-scale surrounding from northern Italy to northern Germany. Consistent with previous results, projections using a Representative Concentration Pathways version 8.5 greenhouse gas scenario reveal a significant decrease of mean summer precipitation. However, unlike previous studies, we find that both extreme day-long and hour-long precipitation events asymptotically intensify with the Clausius-Clapeyron relation. Differences to previous studies might be due to the model or region considered, but we also show that it is inconsistent to extrapolate from present-day precipitation scaling into the future.

Do convection-permitting regional climate models improve projections of future precipitation change?

AbstractRegional climate projections are used in a wide range of impact studies, from assessing future flood risk to climate change impacts on food and energy production. These model projections are typically at 12–50-km resolution, providing valuable regional detail but with inherent limitations, in part because of the need to parameterize convection. The first climate change experiments at convection-permitting resolution (kilometer-scale grid spacing) are now available for the United Kingdom; the Alps; Germany; Sydney, Australia; and the western United States. These models give a more realistic representation of convection and are better able to simulate hourly precipitation characteristics that are poorly represented in coarser-resolution climate models. Here we examine these new experiments to determine whether future midlatitude precipitation projections are robust from coarse to higher resolutions, with implications also for the tropics. We find that the explicit representation of the convective st...

Near-surface wind variability over the broader Adriatic region: insights from an ensemble of regional climate models

Over the past few decades the horizontal resolution of regional climate models (RCMs) has steadily increased, leading to a better representation of small-scale topographic features and more details in simulating dynamical aspects, especially in coastal regions and over complex terrain. Due to its complex terrain, the broader Adriatic region represents a major challenge to state-of-the-art RCMs in simulating local wind systems realistically. The objective of this study is to identify the added value in near-surface wind due to the refined grid spacing of RCMs. For this purpose, we use a multi-model ensemble composed of CORDEX regional climate simulations at 0.11° and 0.44° grid spacing, forced by the ERA-Interim reanalysis, a COSMO convection-parameterizing simulation at 0.11° and a COSMO convection-resolving simulation at 0.02° grid spacing. Surface station observations from this region and satellite QuikSCAT data over the Adriatic Sea have been compared against daily output obtained from the available simulations. Both day-to-day wind and its frequency distribution are examined. The results indicate that the 0.44° RCMs rarely outperform ERA-Interim reanalysis, while the performance of the high-resolution simulations surpasses that of ERA-Interim. We also disclose that refining the grid spacing to a few km is needed to properly capture the small-scale wind systems. Finally, we show that the simulations frequently yield the accurate angle of local wind regimes, such as for the Bora flow, but overestimate the associated wind magnitude. Finally, spectral analysis shows good agreement between measurements and simulations, indicating the correct temporal variability of the wind speed.