Bias-correction of high-resolution, daily-scale, climate simulations
Abstract
The 4th IPCC report concludes that climate change is now unequivocal and projected increases in evaporation and atmospheric water content could intensify the hydrological cycle. However, the coarse spatial resolution and biases in global climate model simulations limit their usefulness in climate impact assessment. In order to improve on these limitations, we use high-resolution regional climate model (RegCM3) simulations, covering the contiguous United States, and a quantile-based bias correction technique to drive a hydrological model, the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model, at 1/8th degree spatial and daily temporal resolution. The simulations cover 1961-1990 in the historical period and 2071-2100 in the future (A2) period. Bias correction is applied to the monthly times-series of RegCM3 simulated precipitation, minimum temperature and maximum temperature, and correction from individual months is subsequently translated to the daily time-series. For comparison, the VIC model is also driven by observations for the historical period. Our results show that bias correction not only substantially improves the VIC model results for the reference period, but it also affects the response of key hydrological variables to projected future anthropogenic increases in greenhouse forcing. These results have important implications for the assessment of future hydrologic changes, as well as for the general effort of developing approaches for quantitative impacts assessment.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2008
- Bibcode:
- 2008AGUFMGC43C0760A
- Keywords:
-
- 1620 Climate dynamics (0429;
- 3309);
- 1622 Earth system modeling (1225);
- 1630 Impacts of global change (1225);
- 1637 Regional climate change