Evaluation framework for sub-daily rainfall extremes simulated by regional climate models

Details

• Journal Title:
  Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology
• Personal Author:
  Van de Vyver, Hans ; Van Schaeybroeck, Bert ; De Troch, Rozemien ; De Cruz, Lesley ; Hamdi, Rafiq ; Villanueva-Birriel, Cecille ; Marbaix, Philippe ; van Ypersele, Jean-Pascal ; Wouters, Hendrik ; Vanden Broucke, Sam ; van Lipzig, Nicole P.M. ; Doutreloup, Sébastien ; Wyard, Coraline ; Scholzen, Chloé ; Fettweis, Xavier ; Caluwaerts, Steven ; Termonia, Piet
• NOAA Program & Office:
  NWS (National Weather Service)
• Description:
  Sub-daily precipitation extremes are high-impact events that can result in flash floods, sewer system overload, or landslides. Several studies have reported an intensification of projected short-duration extreme rainfall in a warmer future climate. Traditionally, regional climate models (RCMs) are run at a coarse resolution using deep-convection parameterization for these extreme events. As computational resources are continuously ramping up, these models are run at convection-permitting resolution, thereby partly resolving the small-scale precipitation events explicitly. To date, a comprehensive evaluation of convection-permitting models is still missing. We propose an evaluation strategy for simulated sub-daily rainfall extremes that summarizes the overall RCM performance. More specifically, the following metrics are addressed: the seasonal/diurnal cycle, temperature and humidity dependency, temporal scaling and spatio-temporal clustering. The aim of this paper is: (i) to provide a statistical modeling framework for some of the metrics, based on extreme value analysis, (ii) to apply the evaluation metrics to a micro-ensemble of convection-permitting RCM simulations over Belgium, against high-frequency observations, and (iii) to investigate the added value of convection-permitting scales with respect to coarser 12-km resolution. We find that convection-permitting models improved precipitation extremes on shorter time scales (i.e, hourly or two-hourly), but not on 6h-24h time scales. Some metrics such as the diurnal cycle or the Clausius-Clapeyron rate are improved by convection-permitting models, whereas the seasonal cycle appears robust across spatial scales. On the other hand, the spatial dependence is poorly represented at both convection-permitting scales and coarser scales. Our framework provides perspectives for improving high-resolution atmospheric numerical modeling and datasets for hydrological applications.
• Source:
  Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology (2021)
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1175/jamc-d-21-0004.1
• ISSN:
  1558-8424 ; 1558-8432
• Format:
  PDF
• Publisher:
  American Meteorological Society
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Rights Information:
  Other
• Compliance:
  Library
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:dbe5b7946df8711f3ec643ea43195594e6f515589c59e448d7b517d48d478099797d278f78f6ef19da4ef6d176211ce76913b8a4cdea27a4115cb276c457c46e
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/64888/noaa_64888_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.36 MB ]