Evaluating the performance of climate models based on Wasserstein distance

Vissio, G., Lembo, V., Lucarini, V. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9392-1471 and Ghil, M. (2020) Evaluating the performance of climate models based on Wasserstein distance. Geophysical Research Letters, 47 (21). e2020GL089385. ISSN 0094-8276 doi: 10.1029/2020GL089385

Abstract/Summary

We propose a methodology for intercomparing climate models and evaluating their performance against benchmarks based on the use of the Wasserstein distance (WD). This distance provides a rigorous way to measure quantitatively the difference between two probability distributions. The proposed approach is flexible and can be applied in any number of dimensions; it allows one to rank climate models taking into account all the moments of the distributions. By selecting the combination of climatic variables and the regions of interest, it is possible to highlight specific model deficiencies. The WD enables a comprehensive evaluation of the skill of a climate model. We apply this approach to a selected number of physical fields, ranking the models in terms of their performance in simulating them and pinpointing their weaknesses in the simulation of some of the selected physical fields in specific areas of the Earth.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/93426
Identification Number/DOI	10.1029/2020GL089385
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Mathematics and Statistics Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for the Mathematics of Planet Earth (CMPE)
Publisher	American Geophysical Union
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