Assessment of RegCM4 simulated inter-annual variability and daily-scale statistics of temperature and precipitation over Mexico

Abstract

The skill of a regional climate model (Reg-CM4) in capturing the mean patterns, interannual variability and extreme statistics of daily-scale temperature and precipitation events over Mexico is assessed through a comparison of observations and a 27-year long simulation driven by reanalyses of observations covering the Central America CORDEX domain. The analysis also includes the simulation of tropical cyclones. It is found that RegCM4 reproduces adequately the mean spatial patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature, along with the associated interannual variability characteristics. The main model bias is an overestimation of precipitation in mountainous regions. The 5 and 95 percentiles of daily temperature, as well as the maximum dry spell length are realistically simulated. The simulated distribution of precipitation events as well as the 95 percentile of precipitation shows a wet bias in topographically complex regions. Based on a simple detection method, the model produces realistic tropical cyclone distributions even at its relatively coarse resolution (dx = 50 km), although the number of cyclone days is underestimated over the Pacific and somewhat overestimated over the Atlantic and Caribbean basins. Overall, it is assessed that the performance of RegCM4 over Mexico is of sufficient quality to study not only mean precipitation and temperature patterns, but also higher order climate statistics.

Inter-annual variability of precipitation over Southern Mexico and Central America and its relationship to sea surface temperature from a set of future projections from CMIP5 GCMs and RegCM4 CORDEX simulations

“…Recently, the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) RCM system, RegCM4 , was run over the region for present-day conditions driven by analyses of observations (Diro et al 2012;Fuentes-Franco et al 2014), and the model was shown to be able to simulate dynamical mechanisms such as the CLLJ (Diro et al 2012), inter-annual variability of precipitation and temperature, and even extreme events such as tropical storms (Fuentes-Franco et al 2013). These studies substantiate the usefulness of RCMs to produce climate projections over this region.…”

Numerical framework and performance of the new multiple-phase cloud microphysics scheme in RegCM4.5: precipitation, cloud microphysics, and cloud radiative effects

“…The RegCM version 4 (or RegCM4) regional climate model of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) is a widely used system that has been applied to local and regional seasonal forecasting and climate change problems for all regions of the globe (e.g. Sylla et al, 2010;Diro et al, 2012a, b;Nogherotto et al, 2013;Coppola et al, 2014;Fuentes-Franco et al, 2014). The model has a wide choice of physical parameterizations for processes such as deep convection, but, to date, uses a simple diagnostic stratiform cloud scheme with a single prognostic cloud variable Pal et al (2000).…”

Rainfall Simulation Using RegCM4 Model in Kalimantan during El Nino Southern Oscillation

“…One of anticipative ways is by forecasting the impact of ENSO in Kalimantan for the future. Global Climate Model (GCM) and Regional Climate Model (RegCM) can be used to perform the projection, but it should be tested first to evaluate the performance of the model [8]. Both spatial models have big difference in the spatial resolution.…”

“…Although RegCM4 has not been widely adopted in Indonesia, particularly in Kalimantan. Simulation of rainfall with RegCM4 is widely used in the United States [8,13]. Most of the parameters used in this research refer Diro et al [13] who tested the sensitivity of the RegCM4 in America.…”

“…That parameter is also used by Franco et al Fuentos. [8]. His research produced an over-estimated of RegCM4 rainfall in the highlands.…”