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Added value of kilometer-scale modeling over the third pole region: a CORDEX-CPTP pilot study

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Abstract

High-accuracy meteorological datasets are urgently required for understanding hydrological processes across the Third Pole (Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, or TP), where meteorological stations are sparse. Low-resolution weather and climate simulations have significant errors in this region due to their inability to resolve meso-microscale processes associated with the complex terrain and convective clouds. This work presents a contribution to CORDEX Convection-Permitting Third Pole (CPTP) using dynamical downscaling of the latest global reanalysis data produced by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (i.e., ERA5) at very high resolution (approximately 0.033°) based on the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The results show that the kilometer-scale horizontal grid spacing simulation (WRF3) outperforms the ERA5 and the High Asia Refined regional reanalysis (HAR v2) in terms of smaller biases and root mean square errors, as well as higher spatial pattern correlation coefficients for 10-m wind speed and precipitation. Furthermore, WRF3 more realistically reproduces observed night-time precipitation peaks in the interior TP, while ERA5 and HAR v2 show erroneous afternoon precipitation peaks. Therefore, the added values achieved by resolving detailed physical processes when increasing grid spacing are considerable. This work demonstrates the potential for developing a reliable high resolution meteorological dataset required for research in this unique region.

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Acknowledgements

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest. All the data can be found at the given citations; the simulation results can be achieved by contacting the authors.

This work is supported by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (Grant No. 2019QZKK0206), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41705084 and 41905087), and the 13th Five-Year Information Plan of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XXH13505-06). DC is supported by the Swedish BECC, MERGE, National Space Agency (SNSA: 188/18), and the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at the National Supercomputer Centre in Sweden (NSC). This is a contribution No. 2 to CORDEX-FPS-CPTP.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Tibetan Plateau Data Center and Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Xu Zhou, Kun Yang, Yaozhi Jiang & Xin Li

  2. Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Kun Yang & Lin Ouyang

  3. Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science, Pennsylvania State University, State College, USA

    Yan Wang

  4. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Deliang Chen

  5. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, USA

    Andreas Prein

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  1. Xu Zhou
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  4. Yan Wang
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Correspondence to Kun Yang.

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Zhou, X., Yang, K., Ouyang, L. et al. Added value of kilometer-scale modeling over the third pole region: a CORDEX-CPTP pilot study. Clim Dyn 57, 1673–1687 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-05653-8

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