Extreme rainfall in Mediterranean France during the fall: added value of the CNRM-AROME Convection-Permitting Regional Climate Model

Fumière, Quentin; Déqué, Michel; Nuissier, Olivier; Somot, Samuel; Alias, Antoinette; Caillaud, Cécile; Laurantin, Olivier; Seity, Yann

doi:10.1007/s00382-019-04898-8

Cited by 76 publications

(88 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…Kotlarski et al, 2014;Prein et al, 2016;Glisan et al, 2019), as well as their projected climate change signals over different parts of the globe (e.g. Gao et al, 2008;Jacob et al, 2014;Rajczak and Schär, 2017). Overall, CORDEX RCMs have been shown to improve the representation of mean climate compared to their driving GCMs, particularly evident over complex terrain associated with their higher resolution (Torma et al, 2015;Giorgi et al, 2016;Sørland et al, 2018).…”

Section: Cordex Rcmsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Over the Mediterranean coasts in autumn, all three ensembles underestimate precipitation over southeastern France and the southern Alps. Berthou et al (2020) and Fumière et al (2020) showed that convection-permitting models are best to capture heavy-precipitation events in these regions in autumn, which mostly contribute to mean precipitation. Note the sharp gradient in Italy between a large mean dry bias in the north and a large mean wet bias in the south.…”

Section: Mean Differences Between Euro-cordex Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

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European daily precipitation according to EURO-CORDEX regional climate models (RCMs) and high-resolution global climate models (GCMs) from the High-Resolution Model Intercomparison Project (HighResMIP)

et al. 2020

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Abstract. In this study, we evaluate a set of high-resolution (25–50 km horizontal grid spacing) global climate models (GCMs) from the High-Resolution Model Intercomparison Project (HighResMIP), developed as part of the EU-funded PRIMAVERA (Process-based climate simulation: Advances in high resolution modelling and European climate risk assessment) project, and from the EURO-CORDEX (Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment) regional climate models (RCMs) (12–50 km horizontal grid spacing) over a European domain. It is the first time that an assessment of regional climate information using ensembles of both GCMs and RCMs at similar horizontal resolutions has been possible. The focus of the evaluation is on the distribution of daily precipitation at a 50 km scale under current climate conditions. Both the GCM and RCM ensembles are evaluated against high-quality gridded observations in terms of spatial resolution and station density. We show that both ensembles outperform GCMs from the 5th Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), which cannot capture the regional-scale precipitation distribution properly because of their coarse resolutions. PRIMAVERA GCMs generally simulate precipitation distributions within the range of EURO-CORDEX RCMs. Both ensembles perform better in summer and autumn in most European regions but tend to overestimate precipitation in winter and spring. PRIMAVERA shows improvements in the latter by reducing moderate-precipitation rate biases over central and western Europe. The spatial distribution of mean precipitation is also improved in PRIMAVERA. Finally, heavy precipitation simulated by PRIMAVERA agrees better with observations in most regions and seasons, while CORDEX overestimates precipitation extremes. However, uncertainty exists in the observations due to a potential undercatch error, especially during heavy-precipitation events. The analyses also confirm previous findings that, although the spatial representation of precipitation is improved, the effect of increasing resolution from 50 to 12 km horizontal grid spacing in EURO-CORDEX daily precipitation distributions is, in comparison, small in most regions and seasons outside mountainous regions and coastal regions. Our results show that both high-resolution GCMs and CORDEX RCMs provide adequate information to end users at a 50 km scale.

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Section: Cordex Rcmsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Mean Differences Between Euro-cordex Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

European daily precipitation according to EURO-CORDEX regional climate models (RCMs) and high-resolution global climate models (GCMs) from the High-Resolution Model Intercomparison Project (HighResMIP)

et al. 2020

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“…The Météo-France COMEPHORE ("COmbinaison en vue de la Meilleure Estimation de la Precipitation HOraiRE") product is used to allow a fairer intercomparison between models and observations than the single rain gauge (Chen and Knutson, 2008): it is an hourly reanalysis of precipitation by merging radar data and rain gauges over France at 1 km × 1 km resolution (more details in Fumière et al, 2019; see also Laurantin et al, 2012). From this product, we can have a better knowledge of the average precipitation rate over a model grid of 50 km×50 km or higher resolution.…”

Section: Observations At Sirtamentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of humidity biases on light precipitation occurrence: observations versus simulations

et al. 2019

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Abstract. This work uses a network of GPS stations over Europe from which a homogenized integrated water vapor (IWV) dataset has been retrieved, completed with colocated temperature and precipitation measurements over specific stations to (i) estimate the biases of six regional climate models over Europe in terms of humidity; (ii) understand their origins; and (iii) finally assess the impact of these biases on the frequency of occurrence of precipitation. The evaluated simulations have been performed in the framework of HYMEX/Med-CORDEX programs and cover the Mediterranean area and part of Europe at horizontal resolutions of 50 to 12 km. The analysis shows that models tend to overestimate the low values of IWV and the use of the nudging technique reduces the differences between GPS and simulated IWV. Results suggest that physics of models mostly explain the mean biases, while dynamics affects the variability. The land surface–atmosphere exchanges affect the estimation of IWV over most part of Europe, especially in summer. The limitations of the models to represent these processes explain part of their biases in IWV. However, models correctly simulate the dependance between IWV and temperature, and specifically the deviation that this relationship experiences regarding the Clausius–Clapeyron law after a critical value of temperature (Tbreak). The high spatial variability of Tbreak indicates that it has a strong dependence on local processes which drive the local humidity sources. This explains why the maximum values of IWV are not necessarily observed over warmer areas, which are often dry areas. Finally, it is shown over the SIRTA observatory (near Paris) that the frequency of occurrence of light precipitation is strongly conditioned by the biases in IWV and by the precision of the models to reproduce the distribution of IWV as a function of the temperature. The results of the models indicate that a similar dependence occurs in other areas of Europe, especially where precipitation has a predominantly convective character. According to the observations, for each range of temperature, there is a critical value of IWV from which precipitation starts to increase. The critical values and the probability of exceeding them are simulated with a bias that depends on the model. Those models, which generally present light precipitation too often, show lower critical values and higher probability of exceeding them.

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“…Even if CNRM-B0 better compares to observations up to 60 mm/ day, both models strongly underestimate the upper tail of the precipitation distribution. This was expected since cloud-resolving regional climate models are required to adequately represent extreme Mediterranean precipitation (Fumière et al 2019). The framework of this study is thus not the best suited to evaluate impact of soil moisture on precipitation extremes.…”

Section: Extreme Precipitation Biasmentioning

confidence: 98%

Precipitation response to extreme soil moisture conditions over the Mediterranean

et al. 2020

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The intimate link between soil moisture and precipitation makes it a “chicken-and-egg situation” that challenges climate studies of the continental water cycle. This association is particularly acute over the Mediterranean, increasingly exposed to droughts with climate change. This study aims at deciphering the impact of spring soil moisture state in the Mediterranean on subsequent warm season precipitation. In an idealized setup, two distinct climate models are used to generate extreme dry or wet soil conditions, and run climate simulations initialized and/or forced by these conditions. Changes in precipitation distribution and persistence are analyzed and where applicable compared to composites from a reanalysis. Spring soil moisture anomalies are found to be very persistent, but the precipitation response is largely model dependent. Overall, dry soils lead to a reduction of precipitation for early summer months and conversely for wet soils although with a fainter and less robust signal. On the other hand, wet soils tend to favor the persistence of precipitation throughout summer over several sub-regions. Our results highlight the stringent need to reduce the wide array of uncertainties associated to soil moisture, land-atmosphere coupling and convection in climate models, before ascertaining that soil moisture initialization could provide more skillful sub-seasonal to seasonal precipitation prediction.

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Extreme rainfall in Mediterranean France during the fall: added value of the CNRM-AROME Convection-Permitting Regional Climate Model

Cited by 76 publications

References 67 publications

European daily precipitation according to EURO-CORDEX regional climate models (RCMs) and high-resolution global climate models (GCMs) from the High-Resolution Model Intercomparison Project (HighResMIP)

European daily precipitation according to EURO-CORDEX regional climate models (RCMs) and high-resolution global climate models (GCMs) from the High-Resolution Model Intercomparison Project (HighResMIP)

Impact of humidity biases on light precipitation occurrence: observations versus simulations

Precipitation response to extreme soil moisture conditions over the Mediterranean

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