Brief communication: Evaluating Antarctic precipitation in ERA5 and CMIP6 against CloudSat observations

• Published in: The Cryosphere
• Main Authors: Roussel, Marie-Laure, Lemonnier, Florentin, Genthon, Christophe, Krinner, Gerhard
• Other Authors: Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (UMR 8539) (LMD), Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-École polytechnique (X)-École des Ponts ParisTech (ENPC)-Sorbonne Université (SU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Département des Géosciences - ENS Paris, École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS Paris), Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS Paris), Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL), Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement (IGE), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)-Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP ), Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2020
• Subjects: [SDU.STU.ME]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Meteorology; Antarctic; Antarc*; The Cryosphere
• Online Access: https://hal.sorbonne-universite.fr/hal-02944705; https://hal.sorbonne-universite.fr/hal-02944705/document; https://hal.sorbonne-universite.fr/hal-02944705/file/tc-14-2715-2020.pdf; https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-2715-2020

International audience CMIP5, CMIP6, and ERA5 Antarctic precipitation is evaluated against CloudSat data. At continental and regional scales, ERA5 and the median CMIP models are biased high, with insignificant improvement from CMIP5 to CMIP6. However, there are fewer positive outliers in CMIP6. AMIP configurations perform better than the coupled ones, and, surprisingly, relative errors in areas of complex topography are higher (up to 50 %) in the five higher-resolution models. The seasonal cycle is reproduced well by the median of the CMIP models, but not by ERA5. Progress from CMIP5 to CMIP6 being limited, there is still room for improvement.