A 1951–80 global land precipitation climatology for the evaluation of general circulation models

Abstract

Previous evaluations of model precipitation fields have suffered from two weaknesses; they have used only mean observed climatologies which have prevented an explicit evaluation of interannual variability, and they have generally failed to quantify the significance of differences between model and observed fields. To rectify these weaknesses, a global precipitation climatology is required which is designed with model evaluation in mind. This paper describes such a climatology representative of the period 1951–80. The climatology is based on historical gauge-precipitation measurements from over 2500 land-based station time series representing over 28% of the Earth's surface. It is necessarily biased towards terrestrial areas. The climatology (CRU5180) is derived from month-by-month gridbox precipitation estimates at 5° resolution. Although other global precipitation climatologies exist, this is the first one to have used a consistent reference period for each station, and to include the details of interannual variability. Fields of mean seasonal and annual precipitation and mean temporal variability are presented, and the variability of global-mean precipitation over 1951–80 assessed. The resulting mean monthly global precipitation fields are compared briefly with two other observed climatologies used for model evaluation, those prepared by Jaeger and Legates and Willmott. The global and hemispheric means, mean seasonal cycles, and spatial patterns of the three cimatologies are compared. Although based on a smaller set of stations than Legates and Willmott, the CRU5180 precipitation estimates agree closely with their uncorrected climatology.