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High-resolution rainfall variability simulated by the WRF RCM: application to eastern France

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Abstract

The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, driven laterally by ERA-Interim reanalyses, is used here to downscale rainfall, at relatively high resolution (~8 km) over Burgundy (eastern France), during the period 1989–2009. Regional simulations are compared to the Météo-France Station Network (MFSN; 127 daily rain-gauge records), at various temporal scales, including interannual variability, the annual cycle, and weather types. Results show that the spatial distribution of WRF-simulated rainfall climatology is consistent with MFSN observation data, but WRF tends to overestimate annual rainfall by ~+15 %. At the interannual scale, WRF also performs very well (r ~ 0.8), despite almost constant, systematic overestimation. Only the average annual rainfall cycle is not accurately reproduced by WRF (r ~ 0.5), with rainfall overestimation in spring and summer, when convective rainfall prevails. During the winter season (October–March), when stratiform rainfall is prevalent, WRF performs better. Despite the biases for summertime convective events, these results suggest that high-resolution WRF simulations could successfully be used to document present and future climate variability at a regional scale. Nevertheless, because of overestimated convective rainfall, WRF-simulated rainfall should probably not be used directly to feed impact models, especially during the vegetative summer period.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Geoffrey Klein for his help in data processing and analysis, and Damien Boulard for his many helpful comments on this paper. Two anonymous reviewers are acknowledged for their constructive comments and suggestions, which helped us to improve the manuscript. The WRF model was obtained from the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research website (http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/download/get_source.html). The ERA-Interim data were provided by the ECMWF Meteorological Archival and Retrieval System (MARS). Calculations were performed using HPC resources from DSI-CCUB (Université de Bourgogne) and Conseil Régional de Haute-Normandie (CRIHAN).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculté des Sciences Gabriel, Centre de Recherches de Climatologie, UMR 6282 Biogéosciences, CNRS/Université de Bourgogne, 6 Bd Gabriel, 21000, Dijon, France

    Romain Marteau, Yves Richard, Benjamin Pohl & Thierry Castel

  2. Department of Agriculture and Environment, AgroSup Dijon, Dijon, France

    Thierry Castel

  3. UFR SVTE, Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France

    Carmela Chateau Smith

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  1. Romain Marteau
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  2. Yves Richard
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Correspondence to Romain Marteau.

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Marteau, R., Richard, Y., Pohl, B. et al. High-resolution rainfall variability simulated by the WRF RCM: application to eastern France. Clim Dyn 44, 1093–1107 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-014-2125-5

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