Evaluation of CORDEX-Arctic daily precipitation and temperature-based climate indices over Canadian Arctic land areas.

• Published in: Climate Dynamics
• Main Authors: Diaconescu, Emilia Paula, Mailhot, Alain, Brown, Ross, Chaumont, Diane
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: precipitation climate indices; temperature climate indices; regional climate model evaluation; CORDEX experiment; daily precipitation; Canadian Arctic; Arctic; Yukon; Canada; Merra
• Online Access: https://espace.inrs.ca/id/eprint/6348/; https://espace.inrs.ca/id/eprint/6348/1/P003149.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-3736-4

This study focuses on the evaluation of daily precipitation and temperature climate indices and extremes simulated by an ensemble of 12 Regional Climate Model (RCM) simulations from the ARCTIC-CORDEX experiment with surface observations in the Canadian Arctic from the Adjusted Historical Canadian Climate Dataset. Five global reanalyses products (ERA-Interim, JRA55, MERRA, CFSR and GMFD) are also included in the evaluation to assess their potential for RCM evaluation in data sparse regions. The study evaluated the means and annual anomaly distributions of indices over the 1980–2004 dataset overlap period. The results showed that RCM and reanalysis performance varied with the climate variables being evaluated. Most RCMs and reanalyses were able to simulate well climate indices related to mean air temperature and hot extremes over most of the Canadian Arctic, with the exception of the Yukon region where models displayed the largest biases related to topographic effects. Overall performance was generally poor for indices related to cold extremes. Likewise, only a few RCM simulations and reanalyses were able to provide realistic simulations of precipitation extreme indicators. The multi-reanalysis ensemble provided superior results to individual datasets for climate indicators related to mean air temperature and hot extremes, but not for other indicators. These results support the use of reanalyses as reference datasets for the evaluation of RCM mean air temperature and hot extremes over northern Canada, but not for cold extremes and precipitation indices.