Can a climate model reproduce extreme regional precipitation events over England and Wales?

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Pearson, K. J., Shaffrey, L. C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2696-752X, Methven, J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7636-6872 and Hodges, K. I. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0894-229X (2014) Can a climate model reproduce extreme regional precipitation events over England and Wales? Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 141 (689). pp. 1466-1472. ISSN 1477-870X doi: 10.1002/qj.2428

Abstract/Summary

The ability of the HiGEM climate model to represent high-impact, regional, precipitation events is investigated in two ways. The first focusses on a case study of extreme regional accumulation of precipitation during the passage of a summer extra-tropical cyclone across southern England on 20 July 2007 that resulted in a national flooding emergency. The climate model is compared with a global Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model and higher resolution, nested limited area models. While the climate model does not simulate the timing and location of the cyclone and associated precipitation as accurately as the NWP simulations, the total accumulated precipitation in all models is similar to the rain gauge estimate across England and Wales. The regional accumulation over the event is insensitive to horizontal resolution for grid spacings ranging from 90km to 4km. Secondly, the free-running climate model reproduces the statistical distribution of daily precipitation accumulations observed in the England-Wales precipitation record. The model distribution diverges increasingly from the record for longer accumulation periods with a consistent under-representation of more intense multi-day accumulations. This may indicate a lack of low-frequency variability associated with weather regime persistence. Despite this, the overall seasonal and annual precipitation totals from the model are still comparable to those from ERA-Interim.

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Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/37219
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO) Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > NCAS Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	Royal Meteorological Society
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Funders:	Natural Environment Research Council	The sponsoring bodies who contributed funding for the creation of this item. Example: NERC Example: The Royal Society of Chemistry A pick list of funders may appear as you type in the funder's name in full or as an acronym. Select a correct match to complete the field or type in a new entry in full. For new entries, the full name is preferred.
Projects:	Integration activity linking DIAMET, DEMON and TEMPEST: Linking physical processes to storm structure in weather and climate prediction models Funded by: Natural Environment Research Council (NE/I00520x1 - £2,904) Local Lead (PI): Len Shaffrey 1 July 2011 - 31 January 2013	Click Add to select your project (received at Reading) from an autocomplete list.

Deposit Details

Date Deposited:	31 Jul 2014 08:16	Date item deposited into CentAUR
Last Modified:	23 Jul 2024 11:32	Date item last modified

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