Abstract
An evaluation of the high spatial resolution, EURO-CORDEX Regional Climate Models (RCMs) is presented here. The study documents the performance of the individual models in simulating the Etesian wind system over the Aegean Sea and the associated large scale atmospheric circulation during the extended summer season May to September from 1989 to 2004. The model outputs are validated against reanalysis datasets (20CRv2c and ERA20C) and daily observational measurements from the mainland Greece and Aegean Sea. The analysis highlights the ability of the RCMs to capture the basic characteristics of the Etesians, indicating small biases (differences) when compared with station series (reanalyses). For instance, ALADIN and ARPEGE generally underestimate the mean wind speed at most stations, while WRF provides better skills in this respect compared to other models. All models provide a good depiction of the atmospheric circulation associated with intense Etesians both at the surface and at 500 hPa.
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the National Centre for Meteorological Research of France, the Danish Meteorological Institute, the Institute Pierre Simon Laplace and the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute for providing the RCMs data. The research leading to these results has received funding from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation. We are indebted to the Hellenic National Meteorological Service for the observational dataset.
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Dafka, S., Toreti, A., Luterbacher, J., Zanis, P., Tyrlis, E., Xoplaki, E. (2017). Do RCMs Accurately Simulate the Etesians Climatology?. In: Karacostas, T., Bais, A., Nastos, P. (eds) Perspectives on Atmospheric Sciences. Springer Atmospheric Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-35095-0_84
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-35095-0_84
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