Simulation Performance and Case Study of Extreme Events in Northwest China Using the BCC-CSM2 Model

Abstract

The BCC-CSM2 model is the second generation of the Beijing Climate Center Climate System Model developed by the National Center of China Meteorological Administration. Using the outputs of two versions of the BCC-CSM2 model with different resolutions, namely: BCC-CSM2-MR and BCC-CSM2-HR, their performance in simulating the climate characteristics of Northwest China was compared. The BCC-CSM2-HR had a better ability to simulate the detailed distribution of the average temperature and precipitation in Northwest China, and could delineate the influence of the topography in detail. The extreme events in Northwest China were evaluated further using the BCC-CSM2-HR and the observation data from China Meteorological Data Center. The BCC-CSM2-HR provided a good simulation of the spatial distribution of extreme climate events in Northwest China, and the spatial distribution of TXx, TNx, TXn, and TNn in Northwest China show closer proximity to the observation than that of TX90p, TN90p, TX10p, and TN10p, even in the case of extreme heavy precipitation. This case study of the extreme weather events showed that the BCC-CSM2-HR model had the best simulation performance for extreme high temperature events in Northwest China, followed by extreme low temperature events, and had the worst simulation ability for extreme precipitation events.