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On the role of domain size and resolution in the simulations with the HIRHAM region climate model

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Abstract

We investigate the simulated temperature and precipitation of the HIRHAM regional climate model using systematic variations in domain size, resolution and detailed location in a total of eight simulations. HIRHAM was forced by ERA-Interim boundary data and the simulations focused on higher resolutions in the range of 5.5–12 km. HIRHAM outputs of seasonal precipitation and temperature were assessed by calculating distributed model errors against a higher resolution data set covering Denmark and a 0.25° resolution data set covering Europe. Furthermore the simulations were statistically tested against the Danish data set using bootstrap statistics. The results from the distributed validation of precipitation showed lower errors for the winter (DJF) season compared to the spring (MAM), fall (SON) and, in particular, summer (JJA) seasons for both validation data sets. For temperature, the pattern was in the opposite direction, with the lowest errors occurring for the JJA season. These seasonal patterns between precipitation and temperature are seen in the bootstrap analysis. It also showed that using a 4,000 × 2,800 km simulation with an 11 km resolution produced the highest significance levels. Also, the temperature errors were more highly significant than precipitation. In similarly sized domains, 12 of 16 combinations of variables, observation validation data and seasons showed better results for the highest resolution domain, but generally the most significant improvements were seen when varying the domain size.

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Acknowledgments

The present study was funded by a grant from the Danish Strategic Research Council for the project HYdrological Modelling for Assessing Climate Change Impacts at differeNT Scales (HYACINTS–www.hyacints.dk) under contract no: DSF-EnMi 2104-07-0008. We acknowledge the E-OBS dataset from the EU-FP6 project ENSEMBLES (http://ensembles-eu.metoffice.com), the data providers in the ECA&D project (http://eca.knmi.nl), the HOBE project (Jensen and Illangasekare 2011) and the CRES project (http://cres-centre.net). Also we would like to thank, Simon Stisen, Philippe Lucas-Picher, Søren Højmark Rasmussen, Ole Bøssing Christensen, Frederik Boberg, Martin Drews, Flemming Vejen and Michael Scharling for assistance and comments during the process.

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Larsen, M.A.D., Thejll, P., Christensen, J.H. et al. On the role of domain size and resolution in the simulations with the HIRHAM region climate model. Clim Dyn 40, 2903–2918 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1513-y

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