Performance Assessment of General Circulation Model in Simulating Daily Precipitation and Temperature Using Multiple Gridded Datasets

Najeebullah Khan,Kamal Ahmed,Minwoo Son,Tarmizi Ismail,Shamsuddin Shahid,Nadeem Nawaz

doi:10.3390/w10121793

Abstract

The performance of general circulation models (GCMs) in a region are generally assessed according to their capability to simulate historical temperature and precipitation of the region. The performance of 31 GCMs of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) is evaluated in this study to identify a suitable ensemble for daily maximum, minimum temperature and precipitation for Pakistan using multiple sets of gridded data, namely: Asian Precipitation–Highly-Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation (APHRODITE), Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST), Princeton Global Meteorological Forcing (PGF) and Climate Prediction Centre (CPC) data. An entropy-based robust feature selection approach known as symmetrical uncertainty (SU) is used for the ranking of GCM. It is known from the results of this study that the spatial distribution of best-ranked GCMs varies for different sets of gridded data. The performance of GCMs is also found to vary for both temperatures and precipitation. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Australia (CSIRO)-Mk3-6-0 and Max Planck Institute (MPI)-ESM-LR perform well for temperature while EC-Earth and MIROC5 perform well for precipitation. A trade-off is formulated to select the common GCMs for different climatic variables and gridded data sets, which identify six GCMs, namely: ACCESS1-3, CESM1-BGC, CMCC-CM, HadGEM2-CC, HadGEM2-ES and MIROC5 for the reliable projection of temperature and precipitation of Pakistan.

Highlights

Simulations of general circulation models (GCM) are generally used for the assessment of climate change
GCMs are selected based on several approaches; first, the past performance-based approach which selects GCM based on its ability to replicate historical climate [7] and second, Water 2018, 10, 1793; doi:10.3390/w10121793
Most of the previous studies suggest that past performance evaluation is one of the most suitable approaches because the GCMs that are best in simulating the past climatic conditions are more likely to predict the future climate [9,10]

Summary

Introduction

Simulations of general circulation models (GCM) are generally used for the assessment of climate change. Water 2018, 10, 1793 the envelope approach where GCMs are selected according to their agreement in the projections of the future climate [8]. The past performance evaluation method does not take account of the future projection of the climate while the envelope-based evaluation does not consider the GCM ability to replicate the past climate. The third approach known as the hybrid approach, which combines the past-performance approach with the envelope method is often used In this approach, the GCMs are screened based on their past performance. Most of the previous studies suggest that past performance evaluation is one of the most suitable approaches because the GCMs that are best in simulating the past climatic conditions are more likely to predict the future climate [9,10]

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion