Intercomparison of CMIP5 simulations of summer precipitation, evaporation, and water vapor transport over Yellow and Yangtze River basins

Abstract

Precipitation and other hydrologic variables play important roles in river basins. In this study, summer precipitation, evaporation, and water vapor transport from 16 models that have participated in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) for the Yellow River basin (a water-limited basin) and the Yangtze River basin (an energy-limited basin) over the period 1986–2005 are analyzed and evaluated. The results suggest that most models tend to overestimate precipitation in the Yellow River basin, whereas precipitation in the Yangtze River basin is generally well simulated. Models that overestimate precipitation in the Yellow River basin also simulate evaporation with large positive biases. For water vapor transport, models and reanalysis data concur that both basins are moisture sinks in summer. In addition, models that strongly overestimate precipitation in the Yellow River basin tend to produce strong water vapor convergence in that region, which is likely to be related to the situation that the western Pacific subtropical high (WPSH) simulated by these models strengthens and advances further westward and northward, resulting in stronger water vapor convergence in the Yellow River basin. Moreover, convective precipitation biases simulated by the models are also partially responsible for their total precipitation biases. Finally, summer precipitation and evaporation are negatively correlated in the Yangtze River basin, whereas the relation between these variables is weak in the Yellow River basin. In both basins, precipitation and water vapor convergence are positively correlated, which is well simulated by all models.