CAN A REGIONAL CLIMATE MODEL REPRODUCE OBSERVED EXTREME TEMPERATURES

Abstract

Using output from a regional Swedish climate model and observations from the Swedish synoptic observational network, we compare seasonal minimum temperatures from model output and observations using marginal extreme value modeling techniques. We make seasonal comparisons using generalized extreme value models and empirically estimate the shift in the distribution as a function of the regional climate model values, using the Doksum shift function. Spatial and temporal comparisons over south central Sweden are made by building hierarchical Bayesian generalized extreme value models for the observed minima and regional climate model output. Generally speaking the regional model is surprisingly well calibrated for minimum temperatures. We do detect a problem in the regional model to produce minimum temperatures close to 0◦C. The seasonal spatial effects are quite similar between data and regional model. The observations indicate relatively strong warming, especially in the northern region. This signal is present in the regional model, but is not as strong.