Abstract
Choosing an appropriate GCM (Global Climate Model, GCM) is of great significance for the simulation of the hydrological cycle over a basin under future climate scenarios. In this study, the Rank Score Method (RS) with eight indicators were applied to comprehensively evaluate the suitability of 19 GCMs issued in the Sixth Global Atmosphere and Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) to the Yellow River Basin (YRB). The results indicated that: 1) The GCMs perform differently in simulating precipitation over the YRB with the top six GCMs ranking from MRI-ESM2-0, ACCESS-CM2, CNRM-CM6-1, CNRM-ESM2-1, FGOALS-f3-L, to MPI-ESM1-2-HR. 2) Most GCMs overestimated the precipitation, and poorly simulated the phase distribution of extremes mainly due to overstimulation of wet season span and precipitation amount in the season, although all GCMs could capture decadal feature of annual precipitation. Meanwhile, it is also found that most GCMs underestimated summer precipitation and overestimated spring precipitation. 3) The GCMs well simulated the spatial distribution of annual precipitation, with an overestimation in the source area, and an underestimation in the northern part of the middle reaches of YRB.
Highlights
With the further intensification of global climate change, the hydrological cycle processes have been significantly affected
This study comprehensively evaluated the ability of 19 Global Climate Models (GCMs) from the CMIP6 to simulate the properties of precipitation in the Yellow River Basin, and provided a basis of model selection for research on the hydrological cycle under future climate scenarios in the Yellow River Basin
The ability of the GCMs in the CMIP6 to simulate the temporal and spatial variations of precipitation in the Yellow River Basin was comprehensively evaluated, the conclusions are as follow: 1) The GCMs differed greatly in their ability to simulate precipitation in the Yellow River Basin
Summary
With the further intensification of global climate change, the hydrological cycle processes have been significantly affected. Analyzing the changes in the hydrological process of the basin, and simulating the change of hydrological elements under future climate scenarios are of great significance for the management and planning of water resources in the basin (Reboita et al, 2019). The Global Climate Models (GCMs) in a series of Global Atmosphere and Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIPs) developed by the World Climate Change Research Program (WCRP) are effective tools for predicting future climate change, and have been widely used to study the impact of climate change on the processes of the hydrological cycle (Stouffer et al, 2017; Zhang and Chen, 2021).
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