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Climate and variability bias adjustment of climate model-derived winds for a southeast Australian dynamical wave model

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Abstract

Climate models are increasingly being used to force dynamical wind wave models in order to assess the potential climate change-driven variations in wave climate. In this study, an ensemble of wave model simulations have been used to assess the ability of climate model winds to reproduce the present-day (1981–2000) mean wave climate and its seasonal variability for the southeast coast of Australia. Surface wind forcing was obtained from three dynamically downscaled Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP-3) global climate model (GCM) simulations (CSIRO Mk3.5, GFDLcm2.0 and GFDLcm2.1). The downscaling was performed using CSIRO’s cubic conformal atmospheric model (CCAM) over the Australian region at approximately 60-km resolution. The wind climates derived from the CCAM downscaled GCMs were assessed against observations (QuikSCAT and NCEP Re-analysis 2 (NRA-2) reanalyses) over the 1981–2000 period and were found to exhibit both bias in mean wind conditions (climate bias) as well as bias in the variance of wind conditions (variability bias). Comparison of the modelled wave climate with over 20 years of wave data from six wave buoys in the study area indicates that direct forcing of the wave models with uncorrected CCAM winds result in suboptimal wave hindcast. CCAM winds were subsequently adjusted for climate and variability bias using a bivariate quantile adjustment which corrects both directional wind components to align in distribution to the NRA-2 winds. Forcing of the wave models with bias-adjusted winds leads to a significant improvement of the hindcast mean annual wave climate and its seasonal variability. However, bias adjustment of the CCAM winds does not improve the ability of the model to reproduce the storm wave climate. This is likely due to a combination of storm systems tracking too quickly through the wave generation zone and the performance of the NRA-2 winds used as a benchmark in this study.

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Acknowledgements

This manuscript is a contribution from the Climate Variability and Change Program of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research: A partnership between CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship. The authors are grateful for financial support for the research from the Coastal Vulnerability Program of the Australian Government Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. We acknowledge the NSW State Government Manly Hydraulics Institute and the Queensland State Government Environmental Protection Agency for the use of their waverider buoy data, NSW Dept of Environment, Climate Change and Water for their in-kind contributions, and NCEP-DOE for the open availability of the NRA-2 database. M. Hemer would also like to acknowledge the support and useful conversations had with Prof. Marcel Stive and Drs. Nico Booij and Leo Holthuijsen during an extended research visit to TUDelft. We would also like to thank Drs. Jim Gunson, Ivan Haigh and Ralf Weisse for their constructive reviews on earlier versions of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship and the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, GPO Box 1538, Hobart, Tasmania, 7000, Australia

    Mark A. Hemer

  2. CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship and the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, PMB#1, Aspendale, Victoria, 3195, Australia

    Kathleen L. McInnes

  3. UNESCO-IHE, PO Box 3015, 2601 DA, Delft, the Netherlands

    Roshanka Ranasinghe

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  1. Mark A. Hemer
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  2. Kathleen L. McInnes
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Correspondence to Mark A. Hemer.

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Responsible Editor: Chari Pattiaratchi

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Physics of Estuaries and Coastal Seas 2010

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Hemer, M.A., McInnes, K.L. & Ranasinghe, R. Climate and variability bias adjustment of climate model-derived winds for a southeast Australian dynamical wave model. Ocean Dynamics 62, 87–104 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-011-0486-4

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