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Performance of ENSEMBLES regional climate models over Central Europe using various metrics

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Abstract

We show the evaluation of ENSEMBLES regional climate models (RCMs) driven by reanalysis ERA40 over a region centered at the Czech Republic. Attention is paid especially to the model ALADIN-CLIMATE/CZ, being used as the basis of the new climate change scenarios simulation for the Czech Republic. The validation criteria used here are based on monthly or seasonal mean air temperature and precipitation. We concentrate not only on spatiotemporal mean values but also on temporal standard deviation, inter-annual variability, the mean annual cycle, and the skill of the models to represent the observed spatial patterns of these quantities. Model ALADIN-CLIMATE/CZ performs quite well in comparison to the other RCMs; we find its performance satisfactory for further use for impact studies. However, it is also shown that the results of evaluation of the RCMs’ skill in simulating observed climate strongly depend on the criteria incorporated for the evaluation.

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Acknowledgments

The ENSEMBLES and E-OBS data used in this work originated from the EU FP6 Integrated Project ENSEMBLES (http://www.ensembles-eu.org, contract number 505539) and ECA&D project (http://eca.knmi.nl) whose support is gratefully acknowledged. The presented analysis has been supported by the Ministry of Environment of the Czech Republic through the project VaV SP/1a6/108/07 and Research Plan MSM0021620860.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Meteorology and Environment Protection, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University in Prague, V Holešovičkách 2, 180 00, Prague 8, Czech Republic

    Eva Holtanová, Jiří Mikšovský, Jaroslava Kalvová, Petr Pišoft & Martin Motl

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  1. Eva Holtanová
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  2. Jiří Mikšovský
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  3. Jaroslava Kalvová
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  4. Petr Pišoft
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  5. Martin Motl
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Correspondence to Eva Holtanová.

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Holtanová, E., Mikšovský, J., Kalvová, J. et al. Performance of ENSEMBLES regional climate models over Central Europe using various metrics. Theor Appl Climatol 108, 463–470 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-011-0542-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-011-0542-5

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