Abstract
Convection-permitting climate models have shown superior performance in simulating important aspects of the precipitation climate including extremes and also to give partly different climate change signals compared to coarser-scale models. Here, we present the first long-term (1998–2018) simulation with a regional convection-permitting climate model for Fenno-Scandinavia. We use the HARMONIE-Climate (HCLIM) model on two nested grids; one covering Europe at 12 km resolution (HCLIM12) using parameterized convection, and one covering Fenno-Scandinavia with 3 km resolution (HCLIM3) with explicit deep convection. HCLIM12 uses lateral boundaries from ERA-Interim reanalysis. Model results are evaluated against reanalysis and various observational data sets, some at high resolutions. HCLIM3 strongly improves the representation of precipitation compared to HCLIM12, most evident through reduced “drizzle” and increased occurrence of higher intensity events as well as improved timing and amplitude of the diurnal cycle. This is the case even though the model exhibits a cold bias in near-surface temperature, particularly for daily maximum temperatures in summer. Simulated winter precipitation is biased high, primarily over complex terrain. Considerable undercatchment in observations may partly explain the wet bias. Examining instead the relative occurrence of snowfall versus rain, which is sensitive to variance in topographic heights it is shown that HCLIM3 provides added value compared to HCLIM12 also for winter precipitation. These results, indicating clear benefits of convection-permitting models, are encouraging motivating further exploration of added value in this region, and provide a valuable basis for impact studies.
Highlights
Projected future warming in northern Europe is among the largest in the world, driven to a large extent by the strong positive feedback involving reduction of snow and ice as the climate warms (Collins et al 2013)
We present a two-decade long simulation using the HARMONIE-Climate regional climate model, cycle 38 (HCLIM38-AROME) run at 3 km grid spacing over Fenno-Scandinavia
The second part is focused on the added value of the high resolution and we investigate to what extent HCLIM38-AROME improves the representation of regional to local scale climate features compared to HCLIM38-ALADIN, primarily in terms of precipitation
Summary
Projected future warming in northern Europe is among the largest in the world, driven to a large extent by the strong positive feedback involving reduction of snow and ice as the climate warms (Collins et al 2013). Uncertainties in future climate responses of precipitation on the regional and local scale, short-duration intense convective precipitation events, are in part related to the inability of coarser resolution climate models to represent these small-scale atmospheric processes, land-sea contrasts, mountain-valley circulations and fine scale surface properties (Kendon et al 2017; Pontopiddan et al 2017; Prein et al 2015; Westra et al 2014; Langhans et al 2013). The second part is focused on the added value of the high resolution and we investigate to what extent HCLIM38-AROME improves the representation of regional to local scale climate features compared to HCLIM38-ALADIN, primarily in terms of precipitation
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