Abstract
The performances of General Circulation Models (GCMs) when checked with conventional methods (i.e. correlation, bias, root-mean-square error) can only be evaluated for each variable individually. The geographic distribution of climate type in GCM simulations, which reflects the spatial attributes of models and is related closely to the terrestrial biosphere, has not yet been evaluated. Thus, whether the geographic distribution of climate types was well simulated by GCMs was evaluated in this study for nine GCMs. The results showed that large areas of climate zones classified by the GCMs were allocated incorrectly when compared to the basic climate zones established by observed data. The percentages of wrong areas covered approximately 30–50 % of the total land area for most models. In addition, the temporal shift in the distribution of climate zones according to the GCMs was found to be inaccurate. Not only were the locations of shifts poorly simulated, but also the areas of shift in climate zones. Overall, the geographic distribution of climate types was not simulated well by the GCMs, nor was the temporal shift in the distribution of climate zones. Thus, a new method on how to evaluate the simulated distribution of climate types for GCMs was provided in this study.
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Acknowledgments
This work was funded by a National Key Scientific Project of China (2012CB95570000) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41271066 and 41330527). The authors acknowledge the World Climate Research Program’s Working Group on Coupled Modeling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model output. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.
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Zhang, X., Yan, X. Deficiencies in the simulation of the geographic distribution of climate types by global climate models. Clim Dyn 46, 2749–2757 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-015-2727-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-015-2727-6