Analysis of a high-resolution regional climate simulation for Alpine temperature. Validation and influence of the NAO

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Proemmel, K. [GKSS-Forschungszentrum Geesthacht GmbH (Germany). Inst. fuer Kuestenforschung

2008-11-06

To determine whether the increase in resolution of climate models improves the representation of climate is a crucial topic in regional climate modelling. An improvement over coarser-scale models is expected especially in areas with complex orography or along coastlines. However, some studies have shown no clear added value for regional climate models. In this study a high-resolution regional climate model simulation performed with REMO over the period 1958-1998 is analysed for 2m temperature over the orographically complex European Alps and their surroundings called the Greater Alpine Region (GAR). The model setup is in hindcast mode meaning that the simulation is driven with perfect boundary conditions by the ERA40 reanalysis through prescribing the values at the lateral boundaries and spectral nudging of the large-scale wind field inside the model domain. The added value is analysed between the regional climate simulation with a resolution of 1/6 and the driving reanalysis with a resolution of 1.125 . Before analysing the added value both the REMO simulation and the ERA40 reanalysis are validated against different station datasets of monthly and daily mean 2m temperature. The largest dataset is the dense, homogenised and quality controlled HISTALP dataset covering the whole GAR, which gave the opportunity for the validation undertaken in this study. The temporal variability of temperature, as quantified by correlation, is well represented by both REMO and ERA40. However, both show considerable biases. The REMO bias reaches 3 K in summer in regions known to experience a problem with summer drying in a number of regional models. In winter the bias is strongly influenced by the choice of the temperature lapse rate, which is applied to compare grid box and station data at different altitudes, and has the strongest influence on inner Alpine subregions where the altitude differences are largest. By applying a constant lapse rate the REMO bias in winter in the high

High-resolution climate modelling of Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Wessem, J.M.|info:eu-repo/dai/nl/413533085

2016-01-01

In this thesis we have used a high-resolution regional atmospheric climate model (RACMO2.3) to simulate the present-day climate (1979-2014) of Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula. We have evaluated the model results with several observations, such as in situ surface energy balance (SEB)

Toward an ultra-high resolution community climate system model for the BlueGene platform

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dennis, John M; Jacob, Robert; Vertenstein, Mariana; Craig, Tony; Loy, Raymond

2007-01-01

Global climate models need to simulate several small, regional-scale processes which affect the global circulation in order to accurately simulate the climate. This is particularly important in the ocean where small scale features such as oceanic eddies are currently represented with adhoc parameterizations. There is also a need for higher resolution to provide climate predictions at small, regional scales. New high-performance computing platforms such as the IBM BlueGene can provide the necessary computational power to perform ultra-high resolution climate model integrations. We have begun to investigate the scaling of the individual components of the Community Climate System Model to prepare it for integrations on BlueGene and similar platforms. Our investigations show that it is possible to successfully utilize O(32K) processors. We describe the scalability of five models: the Parallel Ocean Program (POP), the Community Ice CodE (CICE), the Community Land Model (CLM), and the new CCSM sequential coupler (CPL7) which are components of the next generation Community Climate System Model (CCSM); as well as the High-Order Method Modeling Environment (HOMME) which is a dynamical core currently being evaluated within the Community Atmospheric Model. For our studies we concentrate on 1/10 0 resolution for CICE, POP, and CLM models and 1/4 0 resolution for HOMME. The ability to simulate high resolutions on the massively parallel petascale systems that will dominate high-performance computing for the foreseeable future is essential to the advancement of climate science

The WASCAL high-resolution regional climate simulation ensemble for West Africa: concept, dissemination and assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Heinzeller, Dominikus; Dieng, Diarra; Smiatek, Gerhard; Olusegun, Christiana; Klein, Cornelia; Hamann, Ilse; Salack, Seyni; Bliefernicht, Jan; Kunstmann, Harald

2018-04-01

Climate change and constant population growth pose severe challenges to 21st century rural Africa. Within the framework of the West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), an ensemble of high-resolution regional climate change scenarios for the greater West African region is provided to support the development of effective adaptation and mitigation measures. This contribution presents the overall concept of the WASCAL regional climate simulations, as well as detailed information on the experimental design, and provides information on the format and dissemination of the available data. All data are made available to the public at the CERA long-term archive of the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ) with a subset available at the PANGAEA Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science portal (https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.880512" target="_blank">https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.880512). A brief assessment of the data are presented to provide guidance for future users. Regional climate projections are generated at high (12 km) and intermediate (60 km) resolution using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF). The simulations cover the validation period 1980-2010 and the two future periods 2020-2050 and 2070-2100. A brief comparison to observations and two climate change scenarios from the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) initiative is presented to provide guidance on the data set to future users and to assess their climate change signal. Under the RCP4.5 (Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5) scenario, the results suggest an increase in temperature by 1.5 °C at the coast of Guinea and by up to 3 °C in the northern Sahel by the end of the 21st century, in line with existing climate projections for the region. They also project an increase in precipitation by up to 300 mm per year along the coast of Guinea, by up to 150 mm per year in the Soudano region adjacent in the north and

Air-sea exchange over Black Sea estimated from high resolution regional climate simulations

Science.gov (United States)

Velea, Liliana; Bojariu, Roxana; Cica, Roxana

2013-04-01

Black Sea is an important influencing factor for the climate of bordering countries, showing cyclogenetic activity (Trigo et al, 1999) and influencing Mediterranean cyclones passing over. As for other seas, standard observations of the atmosphere are limited in time and space and available observation-based estimations of air-sea exchange terms present quite large ranges of uncertainty. The reanalysis datasets (e.g. ERA produced by ECMWF) provide promising validation estimates of climatic characteristics against the ones in available climatic data (Schrum et al, 2001), while cannot reproduce some local features due to relatively coarse horizontal resolution. Detailed and realistic information on smaller-scale processes are foreseen to be provided by regional climate models, due to continuous improvements of physical parameterizations and numerical solutions and thus affording simulations at high spatial resolution. The aim of the study is to assess the potential of three regional climate models in reproducing known climatological characteristics of air-sea exchange over Black Sea, as well as to explore the added value of the model compared to the input (reanalysis) data. We employ results of long-term (1961-2000) simulations performed within ENSEMBLE project (http://ensemblesrt3.dmi.dk/) using models ETHZ-CLM, CNRM-ALADIN, METO-HadCM, for which the integration domain covers the whole area of interest. The analysis is performed for the entire basin for several variables entering the heat and water budget terms and available as direct output from the models, at seasonal and annual scale. A comparison with independent data (ERA-INTERIM) and findings from other studies (e.g. Schrum et al, 2001) is also presented. References: Schrum, C., Staneva, J., Stanev, E. and Ozsoy, E., 2001: Air-sea exchange in the Black Sea estimated from atmospheric analysis for the period 1979-1993, J. Marine Systems, 31, 3-19 Trigo, I. F., T. D. Davies, and G. R. Bigg (1999): Objective

Development of ALARO-Climate regional climate model for a very high resolution

Science.gov (United States)

Skalak, Petr; Farda, Ales; Brozkova, Radmila; Masek, Jan

2014-05-01

ALARO-Climate is a new regional climate model (RCM) derived from the ALADIN LAM model family. It is based on the numerical weather prediction model ALARO and developed at the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute. The model is expected to able to work in the so called "grey zone" physics (horizontal resolution of 4 - 7 km) and at the same time retain its ability to be operated in resolutions in between 20 and 50 km, which are typical for contemporary generation of regional climate models. Here we present the main results of the RCM ALARO-Climate model simulations in 25 and 6.25 km resolutions on the longer time-scale (1961-1990). The model was driven by the ERA-40 re-analyses and run on the integration domain of ~ 2500 x 2500 km size covering the central Europe. The simulated model climate was compared with the gridded observation of air temperature (mean, maximum, minimum) and precipitation from the E-OBS version dataset 8. Other simulated parameters (e.g., cloudiness, radiation or components of water cycle) were compared to the ERA-40 re-analyses. The validation of the first ERA-40 simulation in both, 25 km and 6.25 km resolutions, revealed significant cold biases in all seasons and overestimation of precipitation in the selected Central Europe target area (0° - 30° eastern longitude ; 40° - 60° northern latitude). The differences between these simulations were small and thus revealed a robustness of the model's physical parameterization on the resolution change. The series of 25 km resolution simulations with several model adaptations was carried out to study their effect on the simulated properties of climate variables and thus possibly identify a source of major errors in the simulated climate. The current investigation suggests the main reason for biases is related to the model physic. Acknowledgements: This study was performed within the frame of projects ALARO (project P209/11/2405 sponsored by the Czech Science Foundation) and CzechGlobe Centre (CZ.1

Toward an ultra-high resolution community climate system model for the BlueGene platform

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Dennis, John M [Computer Science Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States); Jacob, Robert [Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL (United States); Vertenstein, Mariana [Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States); Craig, Tony [Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States); Loy, Raymond [Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL (United States)

2007-07-15

Global climate models need to simulate several small, regional-scale processes which affect the global circulation in order to accurately simulate the climate. This is particularly important in the ocean where small scale features such as oceanic eddies are currently represented with adhoc parameterizations. There is also a need for higher resolution to provide climate predictions at small, regional scales. New high-performance computing platforms such as the IBM BlueGene can provide the necessary computational power to perform ultra-high resolution climate model integrations. We have begun to investigate the scaling of the individual components of the Community Climate System Model to prepare it for integrations on BlueGene and similar platforms. Our investigations show that it is possible to successfully utilize O(32K) processors. We describe the scalability of five models: the Parallel Ocean Program (POP), the Community Ice CodE (CICE), the Community Land Model (CLM), and the new CCSM sequential coupler (CPL7) which are components of the next generation Community Climate System Model (CCSM); as well as the High-Order Method Modeling Environment (HOMME) which is a dynamical core currently being evaluated within the Community Atmospheric Model. For our studies we concentrate on 1/10{sup 0} resolution for CICE, POP, and CLM models and 1/4{sup 0} resolution for HOMME. The ability to simulate high resolutions on the massively parallel petascale systems that will dominate high-performance computing for the foreseeable future is essential to the advancement of climate science.

High resolution crop growth simulation for identification of potential adaptation strategies under climate change

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, K. S.; Yoo, B. H.

2016-12-01

Impact assessment of climate change on crop production would facilitate planning of adaptation strategies. Because socio-environmental conditions would differ by local areas, it would be advantageous to assess potential adaptation measures at a specific area. The objectives of this study was to develop a crop growth simulation system at a very high spatial resolution, e.g., 30 m, and to assess different adaptation options including shift of planting date and use of different cultivars. The Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) model was used to predict yields of soybean and maize in Korea. Gridded data for climate and soil were used to prepare input data for the DSSAT model. Weather input data were prepared at the resolution of 30 m using bilinear interpolation from gridded climate scenario data. Those climate data were obtained from Korean Meteorology Administration. Spatial resolution of temperature and precipitation was 1 km whereas that of solar radiation was 12.5 km. Soil series data at the 30 m resolution were obtained from the soil database operated by Rural Development Administration, Korea. The SOL file, which is a soil input file for the DSSAT model was prepared using physical and chemical properties of a given soil series, which were available from the soil database. Crop yields were predicted by potential adaptation options based on planting date and cultivar. For example, 10 planting dates and three cultivars were used to identify ideal management options for climate change adaptation. In prediction of maize yield, combination of 20 planting dates and two cultivars was used as management options. Predicted crop yields differed by site even within a relatively small region. For example, the maximum of average yields for 2001-2010 seasons differed by sites In a county of which areas is 520 km2 (Fig. 1). There was also spatial variation in the ideal management option in the region (Fig. 2). These results suggested that local

A characteristics of East Asian climate using high-resolution regional climate model

Science.gov (United States)

Yhang, Y.

2013-12-01

Climate research, particularly application studies for water, agriculture, forestry, fishery and energy management require fine scale multi-decadal information of meteorological, oceanographic and land states. Unfortunately, spatially and temporally homogeneous multi-decadal observations of these variables in high horizontal resolution are non-existent. Some long term surface records of temperature and precipitation exist, but the number of observation is very limited and the measurements are often contaminated by changes in instrumentation over time. Some climatologically important variables, such as soil moisture, surface evaporation, and radiation are not even measured over most of East Asia. Reanalysis is one approach to obtaining long term homogeneous analysis of needed variables. However, the horizontal resolution of global reanalysis is of the order of 100 to 200 km, too coarse for many application studies. Regional climate models (RCMs) are able to provide valuable regional finescale information, especially in regions where the climate variables are strongly regulated by the underlying topography and the surface heterogeneity. In this study, we will provide accurately downscaled regional climate over East Asia using the Global/Regional Integrated Model system [GRIMs; Hong et al. 2013]. A mixed layer model is embedded within the GRIMs in order to improve air-sea interaction. A detailed description of the characteristics of the East Asian summer and winter climate will be presented through the high-resolution numerical simulations. The increase in horizontal resolution is expected to provide the high-quality data that can be used in various application areas such as hydrology or environmental model forcing.

Simulation of synoptic and sub-synoptic phenomena over East Africa and Arabian Peninsula for current and future climate using a high resolution AGCM

KAUST Repository

Raj, Jerry

2015-04-01

Climate regimes of East Africa and Arabia are complex and are poorly understood. East Africa has large-scale tropical controls like major convergence zones and air streams. The region is in the proximity of two monsoons, north-east and south-west, and the humid and thermally unstable Congo air stream. The domain comprises regions with one, two, and three rainfall maxima, and the rainfall pattern over this region has high spatial variability. To explore the synoptic and sub-synoptic phenomena that drive the climate of the region we conducted climate simulations using a high resolution Atmospheric General Circulation Model (AGCM), GFDL\\'s High Resolution Atmospheric Model (HiRAM). Historic simulations (1975-2004) and future projections (2007-2050), with both RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 pathways, were performed according to CORDEX standard. The sea surface temperature (SST) was prescribed from the 2°x2.5° latitude-longitude resolution GFDL Earth System Model runs of IPCC AR5, as bottom boundary condition over the ocean. Our simulations were conducted at a horizontal grid spacing of 25 km, which is an ample resolution for regional climate simulation. In comparison with the regional models, global HiRAM has the advantage of accounting for two-way interaction between regional and global scale processes. Our initial results show that HiRAM simulations for historic period well reproduce the regional climate in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula with their complex interplay of regional and global processes. Our future projections indicate warming and increased precipitation over the Ethiopian highlands and the Greater Horn of Africa. We found significant regional differences between RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 projections, e.g., west coast of the Arabian Peninsula, show anomalies of opposite signs in these two simulations.

High Resolution Modeling of Hurricanes in a Climate Context

Science.gov (United States)

Knutson, T. R.

2007-12-01

Modeling of tropical cyclone activity in a climate context initially focused on simulation of relatively weak tropical storm-like disturbances as resolved by coarse grid (200 km) global models. As computing power has increased, multi-year simulations with global models of grid spacing 20-30 km have become feasible. Increased resolution also allowed for simulation storms of increasing intensity, and some global models generate storms of hurricane strength, depending on their resolution and other factors, although detailed hurricane structure is not simulated realistically. Results from some recent high resolution global model studies are reviewed. An alternative for hurricane simulation is regional downscaling. An early approach was to embed an operational (GFDL) hurricane prediction model within a global model solution, either for 5-day case studies of particular model storm cases, or for "idealized experiments" where an initial vortex is inserted into an idealized environments derived from global model statistics. Using this approach, hurricanes up to category five intensity can be simulated, owing to the model's relatively high resolution (9 km grid) and refined physics. Variants on this approach have been used to provide modeling support for theoretical predictions that greenhouse warming will increase the maximum intensities of hurricanes. These modeling studies also simulate increased hurricane rainfall rates in a warmer climate. The studies do not address hurricane frequency issues, and vertical shear is neglected in the idealized studies. A recent development is the use of regional model dynamical downscaling for extended (e.g., season-length) integrations of hurricane activity. In a study for the Atlantic basin, a non-hydrostatic model with grid spacing of 18km is run without convective parameterization, but with internal spectral nudging toward observed large-scale (basin wavenumbers 0-2) atmospheric conditions from reanalyses. Using this approach, our

Idealized climate change simulations with a high-resolution physical model: HadGEM3-GC2

Science.gov (United States)

Senior, Catherine A.; Andrews, Timothy; Burton, Chantelle; Chadwick, Robin; Copsey, Dan; Graham, Tim; Hyder, Pat; Jackson, Laura; McDonald, Ruth; Ridley, Jeff; Ringer, Mark; Tsushima, Yoko

2016-06-01

Idealized climate change simulations with a new physical climate model, HadGEM3-GC2 from The Met Office Hadley Centre are presented and contrasted with the earlier MOHC model, HadGEM2-ES. The role of atmospheric resolution is also investigated. The Transient Climate Response (TCR) is 1.9 K/2.1 K at N216/N96 and Effective Climate Sensitivity (ECS) is 3.1 K/3.2 K at N216/N96. These are substantially lower than HadGEM2-ES (TCR: 2.5 K; ECS: 4.6 K) arising from a combination of changes in the size of climate feedbacks. While the change in the net cloud feedback between HadGEM3 and HadGEM2 is relatively small, there is a change in sign of its longwave and a strengthening of its shortwave components. At a global scale, there is little impact of the increase in atmospheric resolution on the future climate change signal and even at a broad regional scale, many features are robust including tropical rainfall changes, however, there are some significant exceptions. For the North Atlantic and western Europe, the tripolar pattern of winter storm changes found in most CMIP5 models is little impacted by resolution but for the most intense storms, there is a larger percentage increase in number at higher resolution than at lower resolution. Arctic sea-ice sensitivity shows a larger dependence on resolution than on atmospheric physics.

The WASCAL high-resolution regional climate simulation ensemble for West Africa: concept, dissemination and assessment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

D. Heinzeller

2018-04-01

Full Text Available Climate change and constant population growth pose severe challenges to 21st century rural Africa. Within the framework of the West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL, an ensemble of high-resolution regional climate change scenarios for the greater West African region is provided to support the development of effective adaptation and mitigation measures. This contribution presents the overall concept of the WASCAL regional climate simulations, as well as detailed information on the experimental design, and provides information on the format and dissemination of the available data. All data are made available to the public at the CERA long-term archive of the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ with a subset available at the PANGAEA Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science portal (https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.880512. A brief assessment of the data are presented to provide guidance for future users. Regional climate projections are generated at high (12 km and intermediate (60 km resolution using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF. The simulations cover the validation period 1980–2010 and the two future periods 2020–2050 and 2070–2100. A brief comparison to observations and two climate change scenarios from the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX initiative is presented to provide guidance on the data set to future users and to assess their climate change signal. Under the RCP4.5 (Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 scenario, the results suggest an increase in temperature by 1.5 °C at the coast of Guinea and by up to 3 °C in the northern Sahel by the end of the 21st century, in line with existing climate projections for the region. They also project an increase in precipitation by up to 300 mm per year along the coast of Guinea, by up to 150 mm per year in the Soudano region adjacent in the north and almost no change in

Impact of Variable-Resolution Meshes on Regional Climate Simulations

Science.gov (United States)

Fowler, L. D.; Skamarock, W. C.; Bruyere, C. L.

2014-12-01

The Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) is currently being used for seasonal-scale simulations on globally-uniform and regionally-refined meshes. Our ongoing research aims at analyzing simulations of tropical convective activity and tropical cyclone development during one hurricane season over the North Atlantic Ocean, contrasting statistics obtained with a variable-resolution mesh against those obtained with a quasi-uniform mesh. Analyses focus on the spatial distribution, frequency, and intensity of convective and grid-scale precipitations, and their relative contributions to the total precipitation as a function of the horizontal scale. Multi-month simulations initialized on May 1st 2005 using ERA-Interim re-analyses indicate that MPAS performs satisfactorily as a regional climate model for different combinations of horizontal resolutions and transitions between the coarse and refined meshes. Results highlight seamless transitions for convection, cloud microphysics, radiation, and land-surface processes between the quasi-uniform and locally- refined meshes, despite the fact that the physics parameterizations were not developed for variable resolution meshes. Our goal of analyzing the performance of MPAS is twofold. First, we want to establish that MPAS can be successfully used as a regional climate model, bypassing the need for nesting and nudging techniques at the edges of the computational domain as done in traditional regional climate modeling. Second, we want to assess the performance of our convective and cloud microphysics parameterizations as the horizontal resolution varies between the lower-resolution quasi-uniform and higher-resolution locally-refined areas of the global domain.

The influence of atmospheric grid resolution in a climate model-forced ice sheet simulation

Science.gov (United States)

Lofverstrom, Marcus; Liakka, Johan

2018-04-01

Coupled climate-ice sheet simulations have been growing in popularity in recent years. Experiments of this type are however challenging as ice sheets evolve over multi-millennial timescales, which is beyond the practical integration limit of most Earth system models. A common method to increase model throughput is to trade resolution for computational efficiency (compromise accuracy for speed). Here we analyze how the resolution of an atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) influences the simulation quality in a stand-alone ice sheet model. Four identical AGCM simulations of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) were run at different horizontal resolutions: T85 (1.4°), T42 (2.8°), T31 (3.8°), and T21 (5.6°). These simulations were subsequently used as forcing of an ice sheet model. While the T85 climate forcing reproduces the LGM ice sheets to a high accuracy, the intermediate resolution cases (T42 and T31) fail to build the Eurasian ice sheet. The T21 case fails in both Eurasia and North America. Sensitivity experiments using different surface mass balance parameterizations improve the simulations of the Eurasian ice sheet in the T42 case, but the compromise is a substantial ice buildup in Siberia. The T31 and T21 cases do not improve in the same way in Eurasia, though the latter simulates the continent-wide Laurentide ice sheet in North America. The difficulty to reproduce the LGM ice sheets in the T21 case is in broad agreement with previous studies using low-resolution atmospheric models, and is caused by a substantial deterioration of the model climate between the T31 and T21 resolutions. It is speculated that this deficiency may demonstrate a fundamental problem with using low-resolution atmospheric models in these types of experiments.

Air-Sea Interaction Processes in Low and High-Resolution Coupled Climate Model Simulations for the Southeast Pacific

Science.gov (United States)

Porto da Silveira, I.; Zuidema, P.; Kirtman, B. P.

2017-12-01

The rugged topography of the Andes Cordillera along with strong coastal upwelling, strong sea surface temperatures (SST) gradients and extensive but geometrically-thin stratocumulus decks turns the Southeast Pacific (SEP) into a challenge for numerical modeling. In this study, hindcast simulations using the Community Climate System Model (CCSM4) at two resolutions were analyzed to examine the importance of resolution alone, with the parameterizations otherwise left unchanged. The hindcasts were initialized on January 1 with the real-time oceanic and atmospheric reanalysis (CFSR) from 1982 to 2003, forming a 10-member ensemble. The two resolutions are (0.1o oceanic and 0.5o atmospheric) and (1.125o oceanic and 0.9o atmospheric). The SST error growth in the first six days of integration (fast errors) and those resulted from model drift (saturated errors) are assessed and compared towards evaluating the model processes responsible for the SST error growth. For the high-resolution simulation, SST fast errors are positive (+0.3oC) near the continental borders and negative offshore (-0.1oC). Both are associated with a decrease in cloud cover, a weakening of the prevailing southwesterly winds and a reduction of latent heat flux. The saturated errors possess a similar spatial pattern, but are larger and are more spatially concentrated. This suggests that the processes driving the errors already become established within the first week, in contrast to the low-resolution simulations. These, instead, manifest too-warm SSTs related to too-weak upwelling, driven by too-strong winds and Ekman pumping. Nevertheless, the ocean surface tends to be cooler in the low-resolution simulation than the high-resolution due to a higher cloud cover. Throughout the integration, saturated SST errors become positive and could reach values up to +4oC. These are accompanied by upwelling dumping and a decrease in cloud cover. High and low resolution models presented notable differences in how SST

Simulating high spatial resolution high severity burned area in Sierra Nevada forests for California Spotted Owl habitat climate change risk assessment and management.

Science.gov (United States)

Keyser, A.; Westerling, A. L.; Jones, G.; Peery, M. Z.

2017-12-01

Sierra Nevada forests have experienced an increase in very large fires with significant areas of high burn severity, such as the Rim (2013) and King (2014) fires, that have impacted habitat of endangered species such as the California spotted owl. In order to support land manager forest management planning and risk assessment activities, we used historical wildfire histories from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity project and gridded hydroclimate and land surface characteristics data to develope statistical models to simulate the frequency, location and extent of high severity burned area in Sierra Nevada forest wildfires as functions of climate and land surface characteristics. We define high severity here as BA90 area: the area comprising patches with ninety percent or more basal area killed within a larger fire. We developed a system of statistical models to characterize the probability of large fire occurrence, the probability of significant BA90 area present given a large fire, and the total extent of BA90 area in a fire on a 1/16 degree lat/lon grid over the Sierra Nevada. Repeated draws from binomial and generalized pareto distributions using these probabilities generated a library of simulated histories of high severity fire for a range of near (50 yr) future climate and fuels management scenarios. Fuels management scenarios were provided by USFS Region 5. Simulated BA90 area was then downscaled to 30 m resolution using a statistical model we developed using Random Forest techniques to estimate the probability of adjacent 30m pixels burning with ninety percent basal kill as a function of fire size and vegetation and topographic features. The result is a library of simulated high resolution maps of BA90 burned areas for a range of climate and fuels management scenarios with which we estimated conditional probabilities of owl nesting sites being impacted by high severity wildfire.

Effect of model resolution on a regional climate model simulation over southeast Australia

KAUST Repository

Evans, J. P.; McCabe, Matthew

2013-01-01

Dynamically downscaling climate projections from global climate models (GCMs) for use in impacts and adaptation research has become a common practice in recent years. In this study, the CSIRO Mk3.5 GCM is downscaled using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) regional climate model (RCM) to medium (50 km) and high (10 km) resolution over southeast Australia. The influence of model resolution on the present-day (1985 to 2009) modelled regional climate and projected future (2075 to 2099) changes are examined for both mean climate and extreme precipitation characteristics. Increasing model resolution tended to improve the simulation of present day climate, with larger improvements in areas affected by mountains and coastlines. Examination of circumstances under which increasing the resolution decreased performance revealed an error in the GCM circulation, the effects of which had been masked by the coarse GCM topography. Resolution modifications to projected changes were largest in regions with strong topographic and coastline influences, and can be large enough to change the sign of the climate change projected by the GCM. Known physical mechanisms for these changes included orographic uplift and low-level blocking of air-masses caused by mountains. In terms of precipitation extremes, the GCM projects increases in extremes even when the projected change in the mean was a decrease: but this was not always true for the higher resolution models. Thus, while the higher resolution RCM climate projections often concur with the GCM projections, there are times and places where they differ significantly due to their better representation of physical processes. It should also be noted that the model resolution can modify precipitation characteristics beyond just its mean value.

Effect of model resolution on a regional climate model simulation over southeast Australia

KAUST Repository

Evans, J. P.

2013-03-26

Dynamically downscaling climate projections from global climate models (GCMs) for use in impacts and adaptation research has become a common practice in recent years. In this study, the CSIRO Mk3.5 GCM is downscaled using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) regional climate model (RCM) to medium (50 km) and high (10 km) resolution over southeast Australia. The influence of model resolution on the present-day (1985 to 2009) modelled regional climate and projected future (2075 to 2099) changes are examined for both mean climate and extreme precipitation characteristics. Increasing model resolution tended to improve the simulation of present day climate, with larger improvements in areas affected by mountains and coastlines. Examination of circumstances under which increasing the resolution decreased performance revealed an error in the GCM circulation, the effects of which had been masked by the coarse GCM topography. Resolution modifications to projected changes were largest in regions with strong topographic and coastline influences, and can be large enough to change the sign of the climate change projected by the GCM. Known physical mechanisms for these changes included orographic uplift and low-level blocking of air-masses caused by mountains. In terms of precipitation extremes, the GCM projects increases in extremes even when the projected change in the mean was a decrease: but this was not always true for the higher resolution models. Thus, while the higher resolution RCM climate projections often concur with the GCM projections, there are times and places where they differ significantly due to their better representation of physical processes. It should also be noted that the model resolution can modify precipitation characteristics beyond just its mean value.

A new method to assess the added value of high-resolution regional climate simulations: application to the EURO-CORDEX dataset

Science.gov (United States)

Soares, P. M. M.; Cardoso, R. M.

2017-12-01

Regional climate models (RCM) are used with increasing resolutions pursuing to represent in an improved way regional to local scale atmospheric phenomena. The EURO-CORDEX simulations at 0.11° and simulations exploiting finer grid spacing approaching the convective-permitting regimes are representative examples. The climate runs are computationally very demanding and do not always show improvements. These depend on the region, variable and object of study. The gains or losses associated with the use of higher resolution in relation to the forcing model (global climate model or reanalysis), or to different resolution RCM simulations, is known as added value. Its characterization is a long-standing issue, and many different added-value measures have been proposed. In the current paper, a new method is proposed to assess the added value of finer resolution simulations, in comparison to its forcing data or coarser resolution counterparts. This approach builds on a probability density function (PDF) matching score, giving a normalised measure of the difference between diverse resolution PDFs, mediated by the observational ones. The distribution added value (DAV) is an objective added value measure that can be applied to any variable, region or temporal scale, from hindcast or historical (non-synchronous) simulations. The DAVs metric and an application to the EURO-CORDEX simulations, for daily temperatures and precipitation, are here presented. The EURO-CORDEX simulations at both resolutions (0.44o,0.11o) display a clear added value in relation to ERA-Interim, with values around 30% in summer and 20% in the intermediate seasons, for precipitation. When both RCM resolutions are directly compared the added value is limited. The regions with the larger precipitation DAVs are areas where convection is relevant, e.g. Alps and Iberia. When looking at the extreme precipitation PDF tail, the higher resolution improvement is generally greater than the low resolution for seasons

Changes in Moisture Flux over the Tibetan Plateau during 1979-2011: Insights from a High Resolution Simulation

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gao, Yanhong; Leung, Lai-Yung R.; Zhang, Yongxin; Cuo, Lan

2015-05-15

Net precipitation (precipitation minus evapotranspiration, P-E) changes between 1979 and 2011 from a high resolution regional climate simulation and its reanalysis forcing are analyzed over the Tibet Plateau (TP) and compared to the global land data assimilation system (GLDAS) product. The high resolution simulation better resolves precipitation changes than its coarse resolution forcing, which contributes dominantly to the improved P-E change in the regional simulation compared to the global reanalysis. Hence, the former may provide better insights about the drivers of P-E changes. The mechanism behind the P-E changes is explored by decomposing the column integrated moisture flux convergence into thermodynamic, dynamic, and transient eddy components. High-resolution climate simulation improves the spatial pattern of P-E changes over the best available global reanalysis. High-resolution climate simulation also facilitates new and substantial findings regarding the role of thermodynamics and transient eddies in P-E changes reflected in observed changes in major river basins fed by runoff from the TP. The analysis revealed the contrasting convergence/divergence changes between the northwestern and southeastern TP and feedback through latent heat release as an important mechanism leading to the mean P-E changes in the TP.

TerraClimate, a high-resolution global dataset of monthly climate and climatic water balance from 1958-2015

Science.gov (United States)

Abatzoglou, John T.; Dobrowski, Solomon Z.; Parks, Sean A.; Hegewisch, Katherine C.

2018-01-01

We present TerraClimate, a dataset of high-spatial resolution (1/24°, ~4-km) monthly climate and climatic water balance for global terrestrial surfaces from 1958-2015. TerraClimate uses climatically aided interpolation, combining high-spatial resolution climatological normals from the WorldClim dataset, with coarser resolution time varying (i.e., monthly) data from other sources to produce a monthly dataset of precipitation, maximum and minimum temperature, wind speed, vapor pressure, and solar radiation. TerraClimate additionally produces monthly surface water balance datasets using a water balance model that incorporates reference evapotranspiration, precipitation, temperature, and interpolated plant extractable soil water capacity. These data provide important inputs for ecological and hydrological studies at global scales that require high spatial resolution and time varying climate and climatic water balance data. We validated spatiotemporal aspects of TerraClimate using annual temperature, precipitation, and calculated reference evapotranspiration from station data, as well as annual runoff from streamflow gauges. TerraClimate datasets showed noted improvement in overall mean absolute error and increased spatial realism relative to coarser resolution gridded datasets.

Changes in Moisture Flux Over the Tibetan Plateau During 1979-2011: Insights from a High Resolution Simulation

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gao, Yanhong; Leung, Lai-Yung R.; Zhang, Yongxin; Cuo, Lan

2015-05-01

Net precipitation (precipitation minus evapotranspiration, P-E) changes from a high resolution regional climate simulation and its reanalysis forcing are analyzed over the Tibet Plateau (TP) and compared to the global land data assimilation system (GLDAS) product. The mechanism behind the P-E changes is explored by decomposing the column integrated moisture flux convergence into thermodynamic, dynamic, and transient eddy components. High-resolution climate simulation improves the spatial pattern of P-E changes over the best available global reanalysis. Improvement in simulating precipitation changes at high elevations contributes dominantly to the improved P-E changes. High-resolution climate simulation also facilitates new and substantial findings regarding the role of thermodynamics and transient eddies in P-E changes reflected in observed changes in major river basins fed by runoff from the TP. The analysis revealed the contrasting convergence/divergence changes between the northwestern and southeastern TP and feedback through latent heat release as an important mechanism leading to the mean P-E changes in the TP.

Constraining Stochastic Parametrisation Schemes Using High-Resolution Model Simulations

Science.gov (United States)

Christensen, H. M.; Dawson, A.; Palmer, T.

2017-12-01

Stochastic parametrisations are used in weather and climate models as a physically motivated way to represent model error due to unresolved processes. Designing new stochastic schemes has been the target of much innovative research over the last decade. While a focus has been on developing physically motivated approaches, many successful stochastic parametrisation schemes are very simple, such as the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) multiplicative scheme `Stochastically Perturbed Parametrisation Tendencies' (SPPT). The SPPT scheme improves the skill of probabilistic weather and seasonal forecasts, and so is widely used. However, little work has focused on assessing the physical basis of the SPPT scheme. We address this matter by using high-resolution model simulations to explicitly measure the `error' in the parametrised tendency that SPPT seeks to represent. The high resolution simulations are first coarse-grained to the desired forecast model resolution before they are used to produce initial conditions and forcing data needed to drive the ECMWF Single Column Model (SCM). By comparing SCM forecast tendencies with the evolution of the high resolution model, we can measure the `error' in the forecast tendencies. In this way, we provide justification for the multiplicative nature of SPPT, and for the temporal and spatial scales of the stochastic perturbations. However, we also identify issues with the SPPT scheme. It is therefore hoped these measurements will improve both holistic and process based approaches to stochastic parametrisation. Figure caption: Instantaneous snapshot of the optimal SPPT stochastic perturbation, derived by comparing high-resolution simulations with a low resolution forecast model.

Climate change and high-resolution whole-building numerical modelling

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Blocken, B.J.E.; Briggen, P.M.; Schellen, H.L.; Hensen, J.L.M.

2010-01-01

This paper briefly discusses the need of high-resolution whole-building numerical modelling in the context of climate change. High-resolution whole-building numerical modelling can be used for detailed analysis of the potential consequences of climate change on buildings and to evaluate remedial

Atmospheric blocking in the Climate SPHINX simulations: the role of orography and resolution

Science.gov (United States)

Davini, Paolo; Corti, Susanna; D'Andrea, Fabio; Riviere, Gwendal; von Hardenberg, Jost

2017-04-01

The representation of atmospheric blocking in numerical simulations, especially over the Euro-Atlantic region, still represents a main concern for the climate modelling community. We here discuss the Northern Hemisphere winter atmospheric blocking representation in a set of 30-year simulations which has been performed in the framework of the PRACE project "Climate SPHINX". Simulations were run using the EC-Earth Global Climate Model with several ensemble members at 5 different horizontal resolutions (ranging from 125 km to 16 km). Results show that the negative bias in blocking frequency over Europe becomes negligible at resolutions of about 40 km and finer. However, the blocking duration is still underestimated by 1-2 days, suggesting that the correct blocking frequencies are achieved with an overestimation of the number of blocking onsets. The reasons leading to such improvements are then discussed, highlighting the role of orography in shaping the Atlantic jet stream: at higher resolution the jet is weaker and less penetrating over Europe, favoring the breaking of synoptic Rossby waves over the Atlantic stationary ridge and thus increasing the simulated blocking frequency.

Data Descriptor: TerraClimate, a high-resolution global dataset of monthly climate and climatic water balance from 1958-2015

Science.gov (United States)

John T. Abatzoglou; Solomon Z. Dobrowski; Sean A. Parks; Katherine C. Hegewisch

2018-01-01

We present TerraClimate, a dataset of high-spatial resolution (1/24°, ~4-km) monthly climate and climatic water balance for global terrestrial surfaces from 1958–2015. TerraClimate uses climatically aided interpolation, combining high-spatial resolution climatological normals from the WorldClim dataset, with coarser resolution time varying (i.e., monthly) data from...

TerraClimate, a high-resolution global dataset of monthly climate and climatic water balance from 1958–2015

OpenAIRE

Abatzoglou, John T.; Dobrowski, Solomon Z.; Parks, Sean A.; Hegewisch, Katherine C.

2018-01-01

We present TerraClimate, a dataset of high-spatial resolution (1/24°, ~4-km) monthly climate and climatic water balance for global terrestrial surfaces from 1958–2015. TerraClimate uses climatically aided interpolation, combining high-spatial resolution climatological normals from the WorldClim dataset, with coarser resolution time varying (i.e., monthly) data from other sources to produce a monthly dataset of precipitation, maximum and minimum temperature, wind speed, vapor pressure, and sol...

Changes in snow cover over China in the 21st century as simulated by a high resolution regional climate model

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Shi Ying; Gao Xuejie; Wu Jia; Giorgi, Filippo

2011-01-01

On the basis of the climate change simulations conducted using a high resolution regional climate model, the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) Regional Climate Model, RegCM3, at 25 km grid spacing, future changes in snow cover over China are analyzed. The simulations are carried out for the period of 1951–2100 following the IPCC SRES A1B emission scenario. The results suggest good performances of the model in simulating the number of snow cover days and the snow cover depth, as well as the starting and ending dates of snow cover to the present day (1981–2000). Their spatial distributions and amounts show fair consistency between the simulation and observation, although with some discrepancies. In general, decreases in the number of snow cover days and the snow cover depth, together with postponed snow starting dates and advanced snow ending dates, are simulated for the future, except in some places where the opposite appears. The most dramatic changes are found over the Tibetan Plateau among the three major snow cover areas of Northeast, Northwest and the Tibetan Plateau in China.

Variability of wet troposphere delays over inland reservoirs as simulated by a high-resolution regional climate model

Science.gov (United States)

Clark, E.; Lettenmaier, D. P.

2014-12-01

Satellite radar altimetry is widely used for measuring global sea level variations and, increasingly, water height variations of inland water bodies. Existing satellite radar altimeters measure water surfaces directly below the spacecraft (approximately at nadir). Over the ocean, most of these satellites use radiometry to measure the delay of radar signals caused by water vapor in the atmosphere (also known as the wet troposphere delay (WTD)). However, radiometry can only be used to estimate this delay over the largest inland water bodies, such as the Great Lakes, due to spatial resolution issues. As a result, atmospheric models are typically used to simulate and correct for the WTD at the time of observations. The resolutions of these models are quite coarse, at best about 5000 km2 at 30˚N. The upcoming NASA- and CNES-led Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, on the other hand, will use interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) techniques to measure a 120-km-wide swath of the Earth's surface. SWOT is expected to make useful measurements of water surface elevation and extent (and storage change) for inland water bodies at spatial scales as small as 250 m, which is much smaller than current altimetry targets and several orders of magnitude smaller than the models used for wet troposphere corrections. Here, we calculate WTD from very high-resolution (4/3-km to 4-km) simulations of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) regional climate model, and use the results to evaluate spatial variations in WTD. We focus on six U.S. reservoirs: Lake Elwell (MT), Lake Pend Oreille (ID), Upper Klamath Lake (OR), Elephant Butte (NM), Ray Hubbard (TX), and Sam Rayburn (TX). The reservoirs vary in climate, shape, use, and size. Because evaporation from open water impacts local water vapor content, we compare time series of WTD over land and water in the vicinity of each reservoir. To account for resolution effects, we examine the difference in WRF-simulated

Comparison of Two Grid Refinement Approaches for High Resolution Regional Climate Modeling: MPAS vs WRF

Science.gov (United States)

Leung, L.; Hagos, S. M.; Rauscher, S.; Ringler, T.

2012-12-01

This study compares two grid refinement approaches using global variable resolution model and nesting for high-resolution regional climate modeling. The global variable resolution model, Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS), and the limited area model, Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, are compared in an idealized aqua-planet context with a focus on the spatial and temporal characteristics of tropical precipitation simulated by the models using the same physics package from the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM4). For MPAS, simulations have been performed with a quasi-uniform resolution global domain at coarse (1 degree) and high (0.25 degree) resolution, and a variable resolution domain with a high-resolution region at 0.25 degree configured inside a coarse resolution global domain at 1 degree resolution. Similarly, WRF has been configured to run on a coarse (1 degree) and high (0.25 degree) resolution tropical channel domain as well as a nested domain with a high-resolution region at 0.25 degree nested two-way inside the coarse resolution (1 degree) tropical channel. The variable resolution or nested simulations are compared against the high-resolution simulations that serve as virtual reality. Both MPAS and WRF simulate 20-day Kelvin waves propagating through the high-resolution domains fairly unaffected by the change in resolution. In addition, both models respond to increased resolution with enhanced precipitation. Grid refinement induces zonal asymmetry in precipitation (heating), accompanied by zonal anomalous Walker like circulations and standing Rossby wave signals. However, there are important differences between the anomalous patterns in MPAS and WRF due to differences in the grid refinement approaches and sensitivity of model physics to grid resolution. This study highlights the need for "scale aware" parameterizations in variable resolution and nested regional models.

Climate change projections for Tamil Nadu, India: deriving high-resolution climate data by a downscaling approach using PRECIS

Science.gov (United States)

Bal, Prasanta Kumar; Ramachandran, A.; Geetha, R.; Bhaskaran, B.; Thirumurugan, P.; Indumathi, J.; Jayanthi, N.

2016-02-01

In this paper, we present regional climate change projections for the Tamil Nadu state of India, simulated by the Met Office Hadley Centre regional climate model. The model is run at 25 km horizontal resolution driven by lateral boundary conditions generated by a perturbed physical ensemble of 17 simulations produced by a version of Hadley Centre coupled climate model, known as HadCM3Q under A1B scenario. The large scale features of these 17 simulations were evaluated for the target region to choose lateral boundary conditions from six members that represent a range of climate variations over the study region. The regional climate, known as PRECIS, was then run 130 years from 1970. The analyses primarily focus on maximum and minimum temperatures and rainfall over the region. For the Tamil Nadu as a whole, the projections of maximum temperature show an increase of 1.0, 2.2 and 3.1 °C for the periods 2020s (2005-2035), 2050s (2035-2065) and 2080s (2065-2095), respectively, with respect to baseline period (1970-2000). Similarly, the projections of minimum temperature show an increase of 1.1, 2.4 and 3.5 °C, respectively. This increasing trend is statistically significant (Mann-Kendall trend test). The annual rainfall projections for the same periods indicate a general decrease in rainfall of about 2-7, 1-4 and 4-9 %, respectively. However, significant exceptions are noticed over some pockets of western hilly areas and high rainfall areas where increases in rainfall are seen. There are also indications of increasing heavy rainfall events during the northeast monsoon season and a slight decrease during the southwest monsoon season. Such an approach of using climate models may maximize the utility of high-resolution climate change information for impact-adaptation-vulnerability assessments.

Atlantic hurricanes and associated insurance loss potentials in future climate scenarios: limitations of high-resolution AGCM simulations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Thomas F. Stocker

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Potential future changes in tropical cyclone (TC characteristics are among the more serious regional threats of global climate change. Therefore, a better understanding of how anthropogenic climate change may affect TCs and how these changes translate in socio-economic impacts is required. Here, we apply a TC detection and tracking method that was developed for ERA-40 data to time-slice experiments of two atmospheric general circulation models, namely the fifth version of the European Centre model of Hamburg model (MPI, Hamburg, Germany, T213 and the Japan Meteorological Agency/ Meteorological research Institute model (MRI, Tsukuba city, Japan, TL959. For each model, two climate simulations are available: a control simulation for present-day conditions to evaluate the model against observations, and a scenario simulation to assess future changes. The evaluation of the control simulations shows that the number of intense storms is underestimated due to the model resolution. To overcome this deficiency, simulated cyclone intensities are scaled to the best track data leading to a better representation of the TC intensities. Both models project an increased number of major hurricanes and modified trajectories in their scenario simulations. These changes have an effect on the projected loss potentials. However, these state-of-the-art models still yield contradicting results, and therefore they are not yet suitable to provide robust estimates of losses due to uncertainties in simulated hurricane intensity, location and frequency.

Very high resolution regional climate simulations on the 4 km scale as a basis for carbon balance assessments in northeast European Russia

Science.gov (United States)

Stendel, Martin; Hesselbjerg Christensen, Jens; Adalgeirsdottir, Gudfinna; Rinke, Annette; Matthes, Heidrun; Marchenko, Sergej; Daanen, Ronald; Romanovsky, Vladimir

2010-05-01

Simulations with global circulation models (GCMs) clearly indicate that major climate changes in polar regions can be expected during the 21st century. Model studies have shown that the area of the Northern Hemisphere underlain by permafrost could be reduced substantially in a warmer climate. However, thawing of permafrost, in particular if it is ice-rich, is subject to a time lag due to the large latent heat of fusion. State-of-the-art GCMs are unable to adequately model these processes because (a) even the most advanced subsurface schemes rarely treat depths below 5 m explicitly, and (b) soil thawing and freezing processes cannot be dealt with directly due to the coarse resolution of present GCMs. Any attempt to model subsurface processes needs information about soil properties, vegetation and snow cover, which are hardly realistic on a typical GCM grid. Furthermore, simulated GCM precipitation is often underestimated and the proportion of rain and snow is incorrect. One possibility to overcome resolution-related problems is to use regional climate models (RCMs). Such an RCM, HIRHAM, has until now been the only one used for the entire circumpolar domain, and its most recent version, HIRHAM5, has also been used in the high resolution study described here. Instead of the traditional approach via a degree-day based frost index from observations or model data, we use the regional model to create boundary conditions for an advanced permafrost model. This approach offers the advantage that the permafrost model can be run on the grid of the regional model, i.e. in a considerably higher resolution than in previous approaches. We here present results from a new time-slice integration with an unprecedented horizontal resolution of only 4 km, covering northeast European Russia. This model simulation has served as basis for an assessment of the carbon balance for a region in northeast European Russia within the EU-funded Carbo-North project.

High-resolution, regional-scale crop yield simulations for the Southwestern United States

Science.gov (United States)

Stack, D. H.; Kafatos, M.; Medvigy, D.; El-Askary, H. M.; Hatzopoulos, N.; Kim, J.; Kim, S.; Prasad, A. K.; Tremback, C.; Walko, R. L.; Asrar, G. R.

2012-12-01

Over the past few decades, there have been many process-based crop models developed with the goal of better understanding the impacts of climate, soils, and management decisions on crop yields. These models simulate the growth and development of crops in response to environmental drivers. Traditionally, process-based crop models have been run at the individual farm level for yield optimization and management scenario testing. Few previous studies have used these models over broader geographic regions, largely due to the lack of gridded high-resolution meteorological and soil datasets required as inputs for these data intensive process-based models. In particular, assessment of regional-scale yield variability due to climate change requires high-resolution, regional-scale, climate projections, and such projections have been unavailable until recently. The goal of this study was to create a framework for extending the Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM) crop model for use at regional scales and analyze spatial and temporal yield changes in the Southwestern United States (CA, AZ, and NV). Using the scripting language Python, an automated pipeline was developed to link Regional Climate Model (RCM) output with the APSIM crop model, thus creating a one-way nested modeling framework. This framework was used to combine climate, soil, land use, and agricultural management datasets in order to better understand the relationship between climate variability and crop yield at the regional-scale. Three different RCMs were used to drive APSIM: OLAM, RAMS, and WRF. Preliminary results suggest that, depending on the model inputs, there is some variability between simulated RCM driven maize yields and historical yields obtained from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Furthermore, these simulations showed strong non-linear correlations between yield and meteorological drivers, with critical threshold values for some of the inputs (e.g. minimum and

Climate SPHINX: evaluating the impact of resolution and stochastic physics parameterisations in the EC-Earth global climate model

Science.gov (United States)

Davini, Paolo; von Hardenberg, Jost; Corti, Susanna; Christensen, Hannah M.; Juricke, Stephan; Subramanian, Aneesh; Watson, Peter A. G.; Weisheimer, Antje; Palmer, Tim N.

2017-03-01

The Climate SPHINX (Stochastic Physics HIgh resolutioN eXperiments) project is a comprehensive set of ensemble simulations aimed at evaluating the sensitivity of present and future climate to model resolution and stochastic parameterisation. The EC-Earth Earth system model is used to explore the impact of stochastic physics in a large ensemble of 30-year climate integrations at five different atmospheric horizontal resolutions (from 125 up to 16 km). The project includes more than 120 simulations in both a historical scenario (1979-2008) and a climate change projection (2039-2068), together with coupled transient runs (1850-2100). A total of 20.4 million core hours have been used, made available from a single year grant from PRACE (the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and close to 1.5 PB of output data have been produced on SuperMUC IBM Petascale System at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) in Garching, Germany. About 140 TB of post-processed data are stored on the CINECA supercomputing centre archives and are freely accessible to the community thanks to an EUDAT data pilot project. This paper presents the technical and scientific set-up of the experiments, including the details on the forcing used for the simulations performed, defining the SPHINX v1.0 protocol. In addition, an overview of preliminary results is given. An improvement in the simulation of Euro-Atlantic atmospheric blocking following resolution increase is observed. It is also shown that including stochastic parameterisation in the low-resolution runs helps to improve some aspects of the tropical climate - specifically the Madden-Julian Oscillation and the tropical rainfall variability. These findings show the importance of representing the impact of small-scale processes on the large-scale climate variability either explicitly (with high-resolution simulations) or stochastically (in low-resolution simulations).

Earth System Modeling 2.0: A Blueprint for Models That Learn From Observations and Targeted High-Resolution Simulations

Science.gov (United States)

Schneider, Tapio; Lan, Shiwei; Stuart, Andrew; Teixeira, João.

2017-12-01

Climate projections continue to be marred by large uncertainties, which originate in processes that need to be parameterized, such as clouds, convection, and ecosystems. But rapid progress is now within reach. New computational tools and methods from data assimilation and machine learning make it possible to integrate global observations and local high-resolution simulations in an Earth system model (ESM) that systematically learns from both and quantifies uncertainties. Here we propose a blueprint for such an ESM. We outline how parameterization schemes can learn from global observations and targeted high-resolution simulations, for example, of clouds and convection, through matching low-order statistics between ESMs, observations, and high-resolution simulations. We illustrate learning algorithms for ESMs with a simple dynamical system that shares characteristics of the climate system; and we discuss the opportunities the proposed framework presents and the challenges that remain to realize it.

An investigation of tropical Atlantic bias in a high-resolution coupled regional climate model

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Patricola, Christina M.; Saravanan, R.; Hsieh, Jen-Shan [Texas A and M University, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, College Station, TX (United States); Li, Mingkui; Xu, Zhao [Texas A and M University, Department of Oceanography, College Station, TX (United States); Ocean University of China, Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography of Ministry of Education, Qingdao (China); Chang, Ping [Texas A and M University, Department of Oceanography, College Station, TX (United States); Ocean University of China, Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography of Ministry of Education, Qingdao (China); Second Institute of Oceanography, State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Hangzhou, Zhejiang (China)

2012-11-15

Coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs) commonly fail to simulate the eastern equatorial Atlantic boreal summer cold tongue and produce a westerly equatorial trade wind bias. This tropical Atlantic bias problem is investigated with a high-resolution (27-km atmosphere represented by the Weather Research and Forecasting Model, 9-km ocean represented by the Regional Ocean Modeling System) coupled regional climate model. Uncoupled atmospheric simulations test climate sensitivity to cumulus, land-surface, planetary boundary layer, microphysics, and radiation parameterizations and reveal that the radiation scheme has a pronounced impact in the tropical Atlantic. The CAM radiation simulates a dry precipitation (up to -90%) and cold land-surface temperature (up to -8 K) bias over the Amazon related to an over-representation of low-level clouds and almost basin-wide westerly trade wind bias. The Rapid Radiative Transfer Model and Goddard radiation simulates doubled Amazon and Congo Basin precipitation rates and a weak eastern Atlantic trade wind bias. Season-long high-resolution coupled regional model experiments indicate that the initiation of the warm eastern equatorial Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) bias is more sensitive to the local rather than basin-wide trade wind bias and to a wet Congo Basin instead of dry Amazon - which differs from AOGCM simulations. Comparisons between coupled and uncoupled simulations suggest a regional Bjerknes feedback confined to the eastern equatorial Atlantic amplifies the initial SST, wind, and deepened thermocline bias, while barrier layer feedbacks are relatively unimportant. The SST bias in some CRCM simulations resembles the typical AOGCM bias indicating that increasing resolution is unlikely a simple solution to this problem. (orig.)

Toward 10-km mesh global climate simulations

Science.gov (United States)

Ohfuchi, W.; Enomoto, T.; Takaya, K.; Yoshioka, M. K.

2002-12-01

An atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) that runs very efficiently on the Earth Simulator (ES) was developed. The ES is a gigantic vector-parallel computer with the peak performance of 40 Tflops. The AGCM, named AFES (AGCM for ES), was based on the version 5.4.02 of an AGCM developed jointly by the Center for Climate System Research, the University of Tokyo and the Japanese National Institute for Environmental Sciences. The AFES was, however, totally rewritten in FORTRAN90 and MPI while the original AGCM was written in FORTRAN77 and not capable of parallel computing. The AFES achieved 26 Tflops (about 65 % of the peak performance of the ES) at resolution of T1279L96 (10-km horizontal resolution and 500-m vertical resolution in middle troposphere to lower stratosphere). Some results of 10- to 20-day global simulations will be presented. At this moment, only short-term simulations are possible due to data storage limitation. As ten tera flops computing is achieved, peta byte data storage are necessary to conduct climate-type simulations at this super-high resolution global simulations. Some possibilities for future research topics in global super-high resolution climate simulations will be discussed. Some target topics are mesoscale structures and self-organization of the Baiu-Meiyu front over Japan, cyclogenecsis over the North Pacific and typhoons around the Japan area. Also improvement in local precipitation with increasing horizontal resolution will be demonstrated.

The 2010 Pakistan floods: high-resolution simulations with the WRF model

Science.gov (United States)

Viterbo, Francesca; Parodi, Antonio; Molini, Luca; Provenzale, Antonello; von Hardenberg, Jost; Palazzi, Elisa

2013-04-01

Estimating current and future water resources in high mountain regions with complex orography is a difficult but crucial task. In particular, the French-Italian project PAPRIKA is focused on two specific regions in the Hindu-Kush -- Himalaya -- Karakorum (HKKH)region: the Shigar basin in Pakistan, at the feet of K2, and the Khumbu valley in Nepal, at the feet of Mount Everest. In this framework, we use the WRF model to simulate precipitation and meteorological conditions with high resolution in areas with extreme orographic slopes, comparing the model output with station and satellite data. Once validated the model, we shall run a set of three future time-slices at very high spatial resolution, in the periods 2046-2050, 2071-2075 and 2096-2100, nested in different climate change scenarios (EXtreme PREcipitation and Hydrological climate Scenario Simulations -EXPRESS-Hydro project). As a prelude to this study, here we discuss the simulation of specific, high-intensity rainfall events in this area. In this paper we focus on the 2010 Pakistan floods which began in late July 2010, producing heavy monsoon rains in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan regions of Pakistan and affecting the Indus River basin. Approximately one-fifth of Pakistan's total land area was underwater, with a death toll of about 2000 people. This event has been simulated with the WRF model (version 3.3.) in cloud-permitting mode (d01 14 km and d02 3.5 km): different convective closures and microphysics parameterization have been used. A deeper understanding of the processes responsible for this event has been gained through comparison with rainfall depth observations, radiosounding data and geostationary/polar satellite images.

Regional model simulations of New Zealand climate

Science.gov (United States)

Renwick, James A.; Katzfey, Jack J.; Nguyen, Kim C.; McGregor, John L.

1998-03-01

Simulation of New Zealand climate is examined through the use of a regional climate model nested within the output of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation nine-level general circulation model (GCM). R21 resolution GCM output is used to drive a regional model run at 125 km grid spacing over the Australasian region. The 125 km run is used in turn to drive a simulation at 50 km resolution over New Zealand. Simulations with a full seasonal cycle are performed for 10 model years. The focus is on the quality of the simulation of present-day climate, but results of a doubled-CO2 run are discussed briefly. Spatial patterns of mean simulated precipitation and surface temperatures improve markedly as horizontal resolution is increased, through the better resolution of the country's orography. However, increased horizontal resolution leads to a positive bias in precipitation. At 50 km resolution, simulated frequency distributions of daily maximum/minimum temperatures are statistically similar to those of observations at many stations, while frequency distributions of daily precipitation appear to be statistically different to those of observations at most stations. Modeled daily precipitation variability at 125 km resolution is considerably less than observed, but is comparable to, or exceeds, observed variability at 50 km resolution. The sensitivity of the simulated climate to changes in the specification of the land surface is discussed briefly. Spatial patterns of the frequency of extreme temperatures and precipitation are generally well modeled. Under a doubling of CO2, the frequency of precipitation extremes changes only slightly at most locations, while air frosts become virtually unknown except at high-elevation sites.

Evaluation of a high-resolution regional climate simulation over Greenland

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Lefebre, Filip [Universite catholique de Louvain, Institut d' Astronomie et de Geophysique G. Lemaitre, Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium); Vito - Flemish Institute for Technological Research, Integral Environmental Studies, Mol (Belgium); Fettweis, Xavier; Ypersele, Jean-Pascal van; Marbaix, Philippe [Universite catholique de Louvain, Institut d' Astronomie et de Geophysique G. Lemaitre, Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium); Gallee, Hubert [Laboratoire de Glaciologie et de Geophysique de l' Environnement, Grenoble (France); Greuell, Wouter [Utrecht University, Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, Utrecht (Netherlands); Calanca, Pierluigi [Swiss Federal Research Station for Agroecology and Agriculture, Zurich (Switzerland)

2005-07-01

A simulation of the 1991 summer has been performed over south Greenland with a coupled atmosphere-snow regional climate model (RCM) forced by the ECMWF re-analysis. The simulation is evaluated with in-situ coastal and ice-sheet atmospheric and glaciological observations. Modelled air temperature, specific humidity, wind speed and radiative fluxes are in good agreement with the available observations, although uncertainties in the radiative transfer scheme need further investigation to improve the model's performance. In the sub-surface snow-ice model, surface albedo is calculated from the simulated snow grain shape and size, snow depth, meltwater accumulation, cloudiness and ice albedo. The use of snow metamorphism processes allows a realistic modelling of the temporal variations in the surface albedo during both melting periods and accumulation events. Concerning the surface albedo, the main finding is that an accurate albedo simulation during the melting season strongly depends on a proper initialization of the surface conditions which mainly result from winter accumulation processes. Furthermore, in a sensitivity experiment with a constant 0.8 albedo over the whole ice sheet, the average amount of melt decreased by more than 60%, which highlights the importance of a correctly simulated surface albedo. The use of this coupled atmosphere-snow RCM offers new perspectives in the study of the Greenland surface mass balance due to the represented feedback between the surface climate and the surface albedo, which is the most sensitive parameter in energy-balance-based ablation calculations. (orig.)

Impact assessment of climate change on tourism in the Pacific small islands based on the database of long-term high-resolution climate ensemble experiments

Science.gov (United States)

Watanabe, S.; Utsumi, N.; Take, M.; Iida, A.

2016-12-01

This study aims to develop a new approach to assess the impact of climate change on the small oceanic islands in the Pacific. In the new approach, the change of the probabilities of various situations was projected with considering the spread of projection derived from ensemble simulations, instead of projecting the most probable situation. The database for Policy Decision making for Future climate change (d4PDF) is a database of long-term high-resolution climate ensemble experiments, which has the results of 100 ensemble simulations. We utilized the database for Policy Decision making for Future climate change (d4PDF), which was (a long-term and high-resolution database) composed of results of 100 ensemble experiments. A new methodology, Multi Threshold Ensemble Assessment (MTEA), was developed using the d4PDF in order to assess the impact of climate change. We focused on the impact of climate change on tourism because it has played an important role in the economy of the Pacific Islands. The Yaeyama Region, one of the tourist destinations in Okinawa, Japan, was selected as the case study site. Two kinds of impact were assessed: change in probability of extreme climate phenomena and tourist satisfaction associated with weather. The database of long-term high-resolution climate ensemble experiments and the questionnaire survey conducted by a local government were used for the assessment. The result indicated that the strength of extreme events would be increased, whereas the probability of occurrence would be decreased. This change should result in increase of the number of clear days and it could contribute to improve the tourist satisfaction.

High resolution projections for the western Iberian coastal low level jet in a changing climate

Science.gov (United States)

Soares, Pedro M. M.; Lima, Daniela C. A.; Cardoso, Rita M.; Semedo, Alvaro

2017-09-01

The Iberian coastal low-level jet (CLLJ) is one of the less studied boundary layer wind jet features in the Eastern Boundary Currents Systems (EBCS). These regions are amongst the most productive ocean ecosystems, where the atmosphere-land-ocean feedbacks, which include marine boundary layer clouds, coastal jets, upwelling and inland soil temperature and moisture, play an important role in defining the regional climate along the sub-tropical mid-latitude western coastal areas. Recently, the present climate western Iberian CLLJ properties were extensively described using a high resolution regional climate hindcast simulation. A summer maximum frequency of occurrence above 30 % was found, with mean maximum wind speeds around 15 ms-1, between 300 and 400 m heights (at the jet core). Since the 1990s the climate change impact on the EBCS is being studied, nevertheless some lack of consensus still persists regarding the evolution of upwelling and other components of the climate system in these areas. However, recently some authors have shown that changes are to be expected concerning the timing, intensity and spatial homogeneity of coastal upwelling, in response to future warming, especially at higher latitudes, namely in Iberia and Canaries. In this study, the first climate change assessment study regarding the Western Iberian CLLJ, using a high resolution (9 km) regional climate simulation, is presented. The properties of this CLLJ are studied and compared using two 30 years simulations: one historical simulation for the 1971-2000 period, and another simulation for future climate, in agreement with the RCP8.5 scenario, for the 2071-2100 period. Robust and consistent changes are found: (1) the hourly frequency of occurrence of the CLLJ is expected to increase in summer along the western Iberian coast, from mean maximum values of around 35 % to approximately 50 %; (2) the relative increase of the CLLJ frequency of occurrence is higher in the north off western Iberia; (3

Characteristics of Extreme Extratropical Cyclones in a High-Resolution Global Climate Model

Science.gov (United States)

Catalano, A. J.; Broccoli, A. J.; Kapnick, S. B.; Janoski, T. P.

2017-12-01

In the northeastern United States, many of the strongest impacts from extratropical cyclones (ETCs) are associated with storms that exhibit slow movement, unusual tracks, or exceptional intensity. Examples of extreme ETCs include the Appalachian storm of November 1950, the Perfect Storm of October 1991, and the Superstorm of March 1993. Owing to the rare nature of these events, it is difficult to quantify the associated risks (e.g. high winds, storm surge) given the limited duration of high-quality observational datasets. Furthermore, storms with even greater impacts than those observed may be possible, particularly in a warming climate. In the context of tropical cyclones, Lin and Emanuel (2016) have used the metaphor "grey swans" to refer to high-impact events that have not been observed but may be physically possible. One method for analyzing "grey swans" is to generate a larger sample of ETCs using a coupled climate model. Therefore, we use long simulations (over 1,000 years with atmospheric constituents fixed at 1990 levels) from a global climate model (GFDL FLOR) with 50km atmospheric resolution. FLOR has been shown to realistically simulate the spatial distribution and climatology of ETCs during the reanalysis era. We will discuss the climatological features of these extreme ETC events.

High-Resolution Climate Data Visualization through GIS- and Web-based Data Portals

Science.gov (United States)

WANG, X.; Huang, G.

2017-12-01

Sound decisions on climate change adaptation rely on an in-depth assessment of potential climate change impacts at regional and local scales, which usually requires finer resolution climate projections at both spatial and temporal scales. However, effective downscaling of global climate projections is practically difficult due to the lack of computational resources and/or long-term reference data. Although a large volume of downscaled climate data has been make available to the public, how to understand and interpret the large-volume climate data and how to make use of the data to drive impact assessment and adaptation studies are still challenging for both impact researchers and decision makers. Such difficulties have become major barriers preventing informed climate change adaptation planning at regional scales. Therefore, this research will explore new GIS- and web-based technologies to help visualize the large-volume regional climate data with high spatiotemporal resolutions. A user-friendly public data portal, named Climate Change Data Portal (CCDP, http://ccdp.network), will be established to allow intuitive and open access to high-resolution regional climate projections at local scales. The CCDP offers functions of visual representation through geospatial maps and data downloading for a variety of climate variables (e.g., temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, solar radiation, and wind) at multiple spatial resolutions (i.e., 25 - 50 km) and temporal resolutions (i.e., annual, seasonal, monthly, daily, and hourly). The vast amount of information the CCDP encompasses can provide a crucial basis for assessing impacts of climate change on local communities and ecosystems and for supporting better decision making under a changing climate.

Hydrologic Simulation in Mediterranean flood prone Watersheds using high-resolution quality data

Science.gov (United States)

Eirini Vozinaki, Anthi; Alexakis, Dimitrios; Pappa, Polixeni; Tsanis, Ioannis

2015-04-01

Flooding is a significant threat causing lots of inconveniencies in several societies, worldwide. The fact that the climatic change is already happening, increases the flooding risk, which is no longer a substantial menace to several societies and their economies. The improvement of spatial-resolution and accuracy of the topography and land use data due to remote sensing techniques could provide integrated flood inundation simulations. In this work hydrological analysis of several historic flood events in Mediterranean flood prone watersheds (island of Crete/Greece) takes place. Satellite images of high resolution are elaborated. A very high resolution (VHR) digital elevation model (DEM) is produced from a GeoEye-1 0.5-m-resolution satellite stereo pair and is used for floodplain management and mapping applications such as watershed delineation and river cross-section extraction. Sophisticated classification algorithms are implemented for improving Land Use/ Land Cover maps accuracy. In addition, soil maps are updated with means of Radar satellite images. The above high-resolution data are innovatively used to simulate and validate several historical flood events in Mediterranean watersheds, which have experienced severe flooding in the past. The hydrologic/hydraulic models used for flood inundation simulation in this work are HEC-HMS and HEC-RAS. The Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) curve number (CN) approach is implemented to account for the effect of LULC and soil on the hydrologic response of the catchment. The use of high resolution data provides detailed validation results and results of high precision, accordingly. Furthermore, the meteorological forecasting data, which are also combined to the simulation model results, manage the development of an integrated flood forecasting and early warning system tool, which is capable of confronting or even preventing this imminent risk. The research reported in this paper was fully supported by the

Statistics of Deep Convection in the Congo Basin Derived From High-Resolution Simulations.

Science.gov (United States)

White, B.; Stier, P.; Kipling, Z.; Gryspeerdt, E.; Taylor, S.

2016-12-01

Convection transports moisture, momentum, heat and aerosols through the troposphere, and so the temporal variability of convection is a major driver of global weather and climate. The Congo basin is home to some of the most intense convective activity on the planet and is under strong seasonal influence of biomass burning aerosol. However, deep convection in the Congo basin remains under studied compared to other regions of tropical storm systems, especially when compared to the neighbouring, relatively well-understood West African climate system. We use the WRF model to perform a high-resolution, cloud-system resolving simulation to investigate convective storm systems in the Congo. Our setup pushes the boundaries of current computational resources, using a 1 km grid length over a domain covering millions of square kilometres and for a time period of one month. This allows us to draw statistical conclusions on the nature of the simulated storm systems. Comparing data from satellite observations and the model enables us to quantify the diurnal variability of deep convection in the Congo basin. This approach allows us to evaluate our simulations despite the lack of in-situ observational data. This provides a more comprehensive analysis of the diurnal cycle than has previously been shown. Further, we show that high-resolution convection-permitting simulations performed over near-seasonal timescales can be used in conjunction with satellite observations as an effective tool to evaluate new convection parameterisations.

High-resolution RCMs as pioneers for future GCMs

Science.gov (United States)

Schar, C.; Ban, N.; Arteaga, A.; Charpilloz, C.; Di Girolamo, S.; Fuhrer, O.; Hoefler, T.; Leutwyler, D.; Lüthi, D.; Piaget, N.; Ruedisuehli, S.; Schlemmer, L.; Schulthess, T. C.; Wernli, H.

2017-12-01

Currently large efforts are underway to refine the horizontal resolution of global and regional climate models to O(1 km), with the intent to represent convective clouds explicitly rather than using semi-empirical parameterizations. This refinement will move the governing equations closer to first principles and is expected to reduce the uncertainties of climate models. High resolution is particularly attractive in order to better represent critical cloud feedback processes (e.g. related to global climate sensitivity and extratropical summer convection) and extreme events (such as heavy precipitation events, floods, and hurricanes). The presentation will be illustrated using decade-long simulations at 2 km horizontal grid spacing, some of these covering the European continent on a computational mesh with 1536x1536x60 grid points. To accomplish such simulations, use is made of emerging heterogeneous supercomputing architectures, using a version of the COSMO limited-area weather and climate model that is able to run entirely on GPUs. Results show that kilometer-scale resolution dramatically improves the simulation of precipitation in terms of the diurnal cycle and short-term extremes. The modeling framework is used to address changes of precipitation scaling with climate change. It is argued that already today, modern supercomputers would in principle enable global atmospheric convection-resolving climate simulations, provided appropriately refactored codes were available, and provided solutions were found to cope with the rapidly growing output volume. A discussion will be provided of key challenges affecting the design of future high-resolution climate models. It is suggested that km-scale RCMs should be exploited to pioneer this terrain, at a time when GCMs are not yet available at such resolutions. Areas of interest include the development of new parameterization schemes adequate for km-scale resolution, the exploration of new validation methodologies and data

Validation of two high‐resolution climate simulations over Scandinavia

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mayer, Stephanie; Maule, Cathrine Fox; Sobolowski, Stefan

2014-01-01

., 2007) and to evaluate to what degree the models simulate observed weather. This is done by performing a so‐called perfect boundary experiment by dynamically downscaling ERA interim data. The atmospheric models WRF and HIRHAM5 were used as regional climate models (RCMs) in this study. Both models were...... are employed to examine the performance of the RCMs behaviour on a seasonal to sub‐daily time scale. Both models exhibit a wet bias of 50‐100 % (1‐3 mm) in seasonal precipitation. This bias is most pronounced during winter. The lower‐resolution reanalysis data underestimates wet‐day precipitation in all four...... season by 13‐36 % over the selected cities Bergen, Oslo and Copenhagen. The RCM simulations show a reduction of this underestimation and even indicate a sign change in some seasons/locations. A spatio‐temporal evaluation of downscaled precipitation extremes shows that both RCM downscalings are much...

Outcomes and challenges of global high-resolution non-hydrostatic atmospheric simulations using the K computer

Science.gov (United States)

Satoh, Masaki; Tomita, Hirofumi; Yashiro, Hisashi; Kajikawa, Yoshiyuki; Miyamoto, Yoshiaki; Yamaura, Tsuyoshi; Miyakawa, Tomoki; Nakano, Masuo; Kodama, Chihiro; Noda, Akira T.; Nasuno, Tomoe; Yamada, Yohei; Fukutomi, Yoshiki

2017-12-01

This article reviews the major outcomes of a 5-year (2011-2016) project using the K computer to perform global numerical atmospheric simulations based on the non-hydrostatic icosahedral atmospheric model (NICAM). The K computer was made available to the public in September 2012 and was used as a primary resource for Japan's Strategic Programs for Innovative Research (SPIRE), an initiative to investigate five strategic research areas; the NICAM project fell under the research area of climate and weather simulation sciences. Combining NICAM with high-performance computing has created new opportunities in three areas of research: (1) higher resolution global simulations that produce more realistic representations of convective systems, (2) multi-member ensemble simulations that are able to perform extended-range forecasts 10-30 days in advance, and (3) multi-decadal simulations for climatology and variability. Before the K computer era, NICAM was used to demonstrate realistic simulations of intra-seasonal oscillations including the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO), merely as a case study approach. Thanks to the big leap in computational performance of the K computer, we could greatly increase the number of cases of MJO events for numerical simulations, in addition to integrating time and horizontal resolution. We conclude that the high-resolution global non-hydrostatic model, as used in this five-year project, improves the ability to forecast intra-seasonal oscillations and associated tropical cyclogenesis compared with that of the relatively coarser operational models currently in use. The impacts of the sub-kilometer resolution simulation and the multi-decadal simulations using NICAM are also reviewed.

Coupled atmosphere ocean climate model simulations in the Mediterranean region: effect of a high-resolution marine model on cyclones and precipitation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A. Sanna

2013-06-01

Full Text Available In this study we investigate the importance of an eddy-permitting Mediterranean Sea circulation model on the simulation of atmospheric cyclones and precipitation in a climate model. This is done by analyzing results of two fully coupled GCM (general circulation models simulations, differing only for the presence/absence of an interactive marine module, at very high-resolution (~ 1/16°, for the simulation of the 3-D circulation of the Mediterranean Sea. Cyclones are tracked by applying an objective Lagrangian algorithm to the MSLP (mean sea level pressure field. On annual basis, we find a statistically significant difference in vast cyclogenesis regions (northern Adriatic, Sirte Gulf, Aegean Sea and southern Turkey and in lifetime, giving evidence of the effect of both land–sea contrast and surface heat flux intensity and spatial distribution on cyclone characteristics. Moreover, annual mean convective precipitation changes significantly in the two model climatologies as a consequence of differences in both air–sea interaction strength and frequency of cyclogenesis in the two analyzed simulations.

A statistical-dynamical downscaling procedure for global climate simulations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Frey-Buness, A.; Heimann, D.; Sausen, R.; Schumann, U.

1994-01-01

A statistical-dynamical downscaling procedure for global climate simulations is described. The procedure is based on the assumption that any regional climate is associated with a specific frequency distribution of classified large-scale weather situations. The frequency distributions are derived from multi-year episodes of low resolution global climate simulations. Highly resolved regional distributions of wind and temperature are calculated with a regional model for each class of large-scale weather situation. They are statistically evaluated by weighting them with the according climate-specific frequency. The procedure is exemplarily applied to the Alpine region for a global climate simulation of the present climate. (orig.)

Assessing the optimality of ASHRAE climate zones using high resolution meteorological data sets

Science.gov (United States)

Fils, P. D.; Kumar, J.; Collier, N.; Hoffman, F. M.; Xu, M.; Forbes, W.

2017-12-01

Energy consumed by built infrastructure constitutes a significant fraction of the nation's energy budget. According to 2015 US Energy Information Agency report, 41% of the energy used in the US was going to residential and commercial buildings. Additional research has shown that 32% of commercial building energy goes into heating and cooling the building. The American National Standards Institute and the American Society of Heating Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers Standard 90.1 provides climate zones for current state-of-practice since heating and cooling demands are strongly influenced by spatio-temporal weather variations. For this reason, we have been assessing the optimality of the climate zones using high resolution daily climate data from NASA's DAYMET database. We analyzed time series of meteorological data sets for all ASHRAE climate zones between 1980-2016 inclusively. We computed the mean, standard deviation, and other statistics for a set of meteorological variables (solar radiation, maximum and minimum temperature)within each zone. By plotting all the zonal statistics, we analyzed patterns and trends in those data over the past 36 years. We compared the means of each zone to its standard deviation to determine the range of spatial variability that exist within each zone. If the band around the mean is too large, it indicates that regions in the zone experience a wide range of weather conditions and perhaps a common set of building design guidelines would lead to a non-optimal energy consumption scenario. In this study we have observed a strong variation in the different climate zones. Some have shown consistent patterns in the past 36 years, indicating that the zone was well constructed, while others have greatly deviated from their mean indicating that the zone needs to be reconstructed. We also looked at redesigning the climate zones based on high resolution climate data. We are using building simulations models like EnergyPlus to develop

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: TOWARDS ADVANCED UNDERSTANDING AND PREDICTIVE CAPABILITY OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE ARCTIC USING A HIGH-RESOLUTION REGIONAL ARCTIC CLIMATE SYSTEM MODEL

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gutowski, William J.

2013-02-07

The motivation for this project was to advance the science of climate change and prediction in the Arctic region. Its primary goals were to (i) develop a state-of-the-art Regional Arctic Climate system Model (RACM) including high-resolution atmosphere, land, ocean, sea ice and land hydrology components and (ii) to perform extended numerical experiments using high performance computers to minimize uncertainties and fundamentally improve current predictions of climate change in the northern polar regions. These goals were realized first through evaluation studies of climate system components via one-way coupling experiments. Simulations were then used to examine the effects of advancements in climate component systems on their representation of main physics, time-mean fields and to understand variability signals at scales over many years. As such this research directly addressed some of the major science objectives of the BER Climate Change Research Division (CCRD) regarding the advancement of long-term climate prediction.

High-resolution climate and land surface interactions modeling over Belgium: current state and decennial scale projections

Science.gov (United States)

Jacquemin, Ingrid; Henrot, Alexandra-Jane; Beckers, Veronique; Berckmans, Julie; Debusscher, Bos; Dury, Marie; Minet, Julien; Hamdi, Rafiq; Dendoncker, Nicolas; Tychon, Bernard; Hambuckers, Alain; François, Louis

2016-04-01

The interactions between land surface and climate are complex. Climate changes can affect ecosystem structure and functions, by altering photosynthesis and productivity or inducing thermal and hydric stresses on plant species. These changes then impact socio-economic systems, through e.g., lower farming or forestry incomes. Ultimately, it can lead to permanent changes in land use structure, especially when associated with other non-climatic factors, such as urbanization pressure. These interactions and changes have feedbacks on the climate systems, in terms of changing: (1) surface properties (albedo, roughness, evapotranspiration, etc.) and (2) greenhouse gas emissions (mainly CO2, CH4, N2O). In the framework of the MASC project (« Modelling and Assessing Surface Change impacts on Belgian and Western European climate »), we aim at improving regional climate model projections at the decennial scale over Belgium and Western Europe by combining high-resolution models of climate, land surface dynamics and socio-economic processes. The land surface dynamics (LSD) module is composed of a dynamic vegetation model (CARAIB) calculating the productivity and growth of natural and managed vegetation, and an agent-based model (CRAFTY), determining the shifts in land use and land cover. This up-scaled LSD module is made consistent with the surface scheme of the regional climate model (RCM: ALARO) to allow simulations of the RCM with a fully dynamic land surface for the recent past and the period 2000-2030. In this contribution, we analyze the results of the first simulations performed with the CARAIB dynamic vegetation model over Belgium at a resolution of 1km. This analysis is performed at the species level, using a set of 17 species for natural vegetation (trees and grasses) and 10 crops, especially designed to represent the Belgian vegetation. The CARAIB model is forced with surface atmospheric variables derived from the monthly global CRU climatology or ALARO outputs

High resolution climate scenarios for snowmelt modelling in small alpine catchments

Science.gov (United States)

Schirmer, M.; Peleg, N.; Burlando, P.; Jonas, T.

2017-12-01

Snow in the Alps is affected by climate change with regard to duration, timing and amount. This has implications with respect to important societal issues as drinking water supply or hydropower generation. In Switzerland, the latter received a lot of attention following the political decision to phase out of nuclear electricity production. An increasing number of authorization requests for small hydropower plants located in small alpine catchments was observed in the recent years. This situation generates ecological conflicts, while the expected climate change poses a threat to water availability thus putting at risk investments in such hydropower plants. Reliable high-resolution climate scenarios are thus required, which account for small-scale processes to achieve realistic predictions of snowmelt runoff and its variability in small alpine catchments. We therefore used a novel model chain by coupling a stochastic 2-dimensional weather generator (AWE-GEN-2d) with a state-of-the-art energy balance snow cover model (FSM). AWE-GEN-2d was applied to generate ensembles of climate variables at very fine temporal and spatial resolution, thus providing all climatic input variables required for the energy balance modelling. The land-surface model FSM was used to describe spatially variable snow cover accumulation and melt processes. The FSM was refined to allow applications at very high spatial resolution by specifically accounting for small-scale processes, such as a subgrid-parametrization of snow covered area or an improved representation of forest-snow processes. For the present study, the model chain was tested for current climate conditions using extensive observational dataset of different spatial and temporal coverage. Small-scale spatial processes such as elevation gradients or aspect differences in the snow distribution were evaluated using airborne LiDAR data. 40-year of monitoring data for snow water equivalent, snowmelt and snow-covered area for entire

A new synoptic scale resolving global climate simulation using the Community Earth System Model

Science.gov (United States)

Small, R. Justin; Bacmeister, Julio; Bailey, David; Baker, Allison; Bishop, Stuart; Bryan, Frank; Caron, Julie; Dennis, John; Gent, Peter; Hsu, Hsiao-ming; Jochum, Markus; Lawrence, David; Muñoz, Ernesto; diNezio, Pedro; Scheitlin, Tim; Tomas, Robert; Tribbia, Joseph; Tseng, Yu-heng; Vertenstein, Mariana

2014-12-01

High-resolution global climate modeling holds the promise of capturing planetary-scale climate modes and small-scale (regional and sometimes extreme) features simultaneously, including their mutual interaction. This paper discusses a new state-of-the-art high-resolution Community Earth System Model (CESM) simulation that was performed with these goals in mind. The atmospheric component was at 0.25° grid spacing, and ocean component at 0.1°. One hundred years of "present-day" simulation were completed. Major results were that annual mean sea surface temperature (SST) in the equatorial Pacific and El-Niño Southern Oscillation variability were well simulated compared to standard resolution models. Tropical and southern Atlantic SST also had much reduced bias compared to previous versions of the model. In addition, the high resolution of the model enabled small-scale features of the climate system to be represented, such as air-sea interaction over ocean frontal zones, mesoscale systems generated by the Rockies, and Tropical Cyclones. Associated single component runs and standard resolution coupled runs are used to help attribute the strengths and weaknesses of the fully coupled run. The high-resolution run employed 23,404 cores, costing 250 thousand processor-hours per simulated year and made about two simulated years per day on the NCAR-Wyoming supercomputer "Yellowstone."

3D visualization of ultra-fine ICON climate simulation data

Science.gov (United States)

Röber, Niklas; Spickermann, Dela; Böttinger, Michael

2016-04-01

Advances in high performance computing and model development allow the simulation of finer and more detailed climate experiments. The new ICON model is based on an unstructured triangular grid and can be used for a wide range of applications, ranging from global coupled climate simulations down to very detailed and high resolution regional experiments. It consists of an atmospheric and an oceanic component and scales very well for high numbers of cores. This allows us to conduct very detailed climate experiments with ultra-fine resolutions. ICON is jointly developed in partnership with DKRZ by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and the German Weather Service. This presentation discusses our current workflow for analyzing and visualizing this high resolution data. The ICON model has been used for eddy resolving (developed specific plugins for the free available visualization software ParaView and Vapor, which allows us to read and handle that much data. Within ParaView, we can additionally compare prognostic variables with performance data side by side to investigate the performance and scalability of the model. With the simulation running in parallel on several hundred nodes, an equal load balance is imperative. In our presentation we show visualizations of high-resolution ICON oceanographic and HDCP2 atmospheric simulations that were created using ParaView and Vapor. Furthermore we discuss our current efforts to improve our visualization capabilities, thereby exploring the potential of regular in-situ visualization, as well as of in-situ compression / post visualization.

Overview of Proposal on High Resolution Climate Model Simulations of Recent Hurricane and Typhoon Activity: The Impact of SSTs and the Madden Julian Oscillation

Science.gov (United States)

Schubert, Siegfried; Kang, In-Sik; Reale, Oreste

2009-01-01

This talk gives an update on the progress and further plans for a coordinated project to carry out and analyze high-resolution simulations of tropical storm activity with a number of state-of-the-art global climate models. Issues addressed include, the mechanisms by which SSTs control tropical storm. activity on inter-annual and longer time scales, the modulation of that activity by the Madden Julian Oscillation on sub-seasonal time scales, as well as the sensitivity of the results to model formulation. The project also encourages companion coarser resolution runs to help assess resolution dependence, and. the ability of the models to capture the large-scale and long-terra changes in the parameters important for hurricane development. Addressing the above science questions is critical to understanding the nature of the variability of the Asian-Australian monsoon and its regional impacts, and thus CLIVAR RAMP fully endorses the proposed tropical storm simulation activity. The project is open to all interested organizations and investigators, and the results from the runs will be shared among the participants, as well as made available to the broader scientific community for analysis.

North Atlantic Tropical Cyclones: historical simulations and future changes with the new high-resolution Arpege AGCM.

Science.gov (United States)

Pilon, R.; Chauvin, F.; Palany, P.; Belmadani, A.

2017-12-01

A new version of the variable high-resolution Meteo-France Arpege atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) has been developed for tropical cyclones (TC) studies, with a focus on the North Atlantic basin, where the model horizontal resolution is 15 km. Ensemble historical AMIP (Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project)-type simulations (1965-2014) and future projections (2020-2080) under the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario have been produced. TC-like vortices tracking algorithm is used to investigate TC activity and variability. TC frequency, genesis, geographical distribution and intensity are examined. Historical simulations are compared to best-track and reanalysis datasets. Model TC frequency is generally realistic but tends to be too high during the rst decade of the historical simulations. Biases appear to originate from both the tracking algorithm and model climatology. Nevertheless, the model is able to simulate extremely well intense TCs corresponding to category 5 hurricanes in the North Atlantic, where grid resolution is highest. Interaction between developing TCs and vertical wind shear is shown to be contributing factor for TC variability. Future changes in TC activity and properties are also discussed.

Near-global climate simulation at 1 km resolution: establishing a performance baseline on 4888 GPUs with COSMO 5.0

Science.gov (United States)

Fuhrer, Oliver; Chadha, Tarun; Hoefler, Torsten; Kwasniewski, Grzegorz; Lapillonne, Xavier; Leutwyler, David; Lüthi, Daniel; Osuna, Carlos; Schär, Christoph; Schulthess, Thomas C.; Vogt, Hannes

2018-05-01

The best hope for reducing long-standing global climate model biases is by increasing resolution to the kilometer scale. Here we present results from an ultrahigh-resolution non-hydrostatic climate model for a near-global setup running on the full Piz Daint supercomputer on 4888 GPUs (graphics processing units). The dynamical core of the model has been completely rewritten using a domain-specific language (DSL) for performance portability across different hardware architectures. Physical parameterizations and diagnostics have been ported using compiler directives. To our knowledge this represents the first complete atmospheric model being run entirely on accelerators on this scale. At a grid spacing of 930 m (1.9 km), we achieve a simulation throughput of 0.043 (0.23) simulated years per day and an energy consumption of 596 MWh per simulated year. Furthermore, we propose a new memory usage efficiency (MUE) metric that considers how efficiently the memory bandwidth - the dominant bottleneck of climate codes - is being used.

A regional climate simulation over the Iberian Peninsula for the last millennium

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

J. J. Gómez-Navarro

2011-04-01

Full Text Available A high-resolution (30 km regional paleoclimate simulation of the last millennium over the Iberian Peninsula (IP is presented. The simulation was performed with a climate version of the mesoscale model MM5 driven by the global model ECHO-G. Both models were driven by the same reconstructions of several external forcing factors. The high spatial resolution of the regional model allows climatologists to realistically simulate many aspects of the climate in the IP, as compared to an observational data set in the reference period 1961–1990. Although the spatial-averaged values developed by the regional model are tightly driven by the boundary conditions, it is capable to develop a different realisation of the past climate at regional scales, especially in the high-frequency domain and for precipitation. This has to be considered when comparing the results of climate simulations versus proxy reconstructions. A preliminary comparison of the simulation results with reconstructions of temperature and precipitation over the IP shows good agreement in the warming trends in the last century of the simulation, although there are large disagreements in key periods such as the precipitation anomalies in the Maunder Minimum.

Verification of high resolution simulation of precipitation and wind in Portugal

Science.gov (United States)

Menezes, Isilda; Pereira, Mário; Moreira, Demerval; Carvalheiro, Luís; Bugalho, Lourdes; Corte-Real, João

2017-04-01

Demand of energy and freshwater continues to grow as the global population and demands increase. Precipitation feed the freshwater ecosystems which provides a wealth of goods and services for society and river flow to sustain native species and natural ecosystem functions. The adoption of the wind and hydro-electric power supplies will sustain energy demands/services without restricting the economic growth and accelerated policies scenarios. However, the international meteorological observation network is not sufficiently dense to directly support high resolution climatic research. In this sense, coupled global and regional atmospheric models constitute the most appropriate physical and numerical tool for weather forecasting and downscaling in high resolution grids with the capacity to solve problems resulting from the lack of observed data and measuring errors. Thus, this study aims to calibrate and validate of the WRF regional model from precipitation and wind fields simulation, in high spatial resolution grid cover in Portugal. The simulations were performed in two-way nesting with three grids of increasing resolution (60 km, 20 km and 5 km) and the model performance assessed for the summer and winter months (January and July), using input variables from two different reanalyses and forecasted databases (ERA-Interim and NCEP-FNL) and different forcing schemes. The verification procedure included: (i) the use of several statistics error estimators, correlation based measures and relative errors descriptors; and, (ii) an observed dataset composed by time series of hourly precipitation, wind speed and direction provided by the Portuguese meteorological institute for a comprehensive set of weather stations. Main results suggested the good ability of the WRF to: (i) reproduce the spatial patterns of the mean and total observed fields; (ii) with relatively small values of bias and other errors; and, (iii) and good temporal correlation. These findings are in good

Can small island mountains provide relief from the Subtropical Precipitation Decline? Simulating future precipitation regimes for small island nations using high resolution Regional Climate Models.

Science.gov (United States)

Bowden, J.; Terando, A. J.; Misra, V.; Wootten, A.

2017-12-01

Small island nations are vulnerable to changes in the hydrologic cycle because of their limited water resources. This risk to water security is likely even higher in sub-tropical regions where anthropogenic forcing of the climate system is expected to lead to a drier future (the so-called `dry-get-drier' pattern). However, high-resolution numerical modeling experiments have also shown an enhancement of existing orographically-influenced precipitation patterns on islands with steep topography, potentially mitigating subtropical drying on windward mountain sides. Here we explore the robustness of the near-term (25-45 years) subtropical precipitation decline (SPD) across two island groupings in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. These islands, forming the boundary between the Greater and Lesser Antilles, significantly differ in size, topographic relief, and orientation to prevailing winds. Two 2-km horizontal resolution regional climate model simulations are used to downscale a total of three different GCMs under the RCP8.5 emissions scenario. Results indicate some possibility for modest increases in precipitation at the leading edge of the Luquillo Mountains in Puerto Rico, but consistent declines elsewhere. We conclude with a discussion of potential explanations for these patterns and the attendant risks to water security that subtropical small island nations could face as the climate warms.

Mean and extreme temperatures in a warming climate: EURO CORDEX and WRF regional climate high-resolution projections for Portugal

Science.gov (United States)

Cardoso, Rita M.; Soares, Pedro M. M.; Lima, Daniela C. A.; Miranda, Pedro M. A.

2018-02-01

Large temperature spatio-temporal gradients are a common feature of Mediterranean climates. The Portuguese complex topography and coastlines enhances such features, and in a small region large temperature gradients with high interannual variability is detected. In this study, the EURO-CORDEX high-resolution regional climate simulations (0.11° and 0.44° resolutions) are used to investigate the maximum and minimum temperature projections across the twenty-first century according to RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. An additional WRF simulation with even higher resolution (9 km) for RCP8.5 scenario is also examined. All simulations for the historical period (1971-2000) are evaluated against the available station observations and the EURO-CORDEX model results are ranked in order to build multi-model ensembles. In present climate models are able to reproduce the main topography/coast related temperature gradients. Although there are discernible differences between models, most present a cold bias. The multi-model ensembles improve the overall representation of the temperature. The ensembles project a significant increase of the maximum and minimum temperatures in all seasons and scenarios. Maximum increments of 8 °C in summer and autumn and between 2 and 4 °C in winter and spring are projected in RCP8.5. The temperature distributions for all models show a significant increase in the upper tails of the PDFs. In RCP8.5 more than half of the extended summer (MJJAS) has maximum temperatures exceeding the historical 90th percentile and, on average, 60 tropical nights are projected for the end of the century, whilst there are only 7 tropical nights in the historical period. Conversely, the number of cold days almost disappears. The yearly average number of heat waves increases by seven to ninefold by 2100 and the most frequent length rises from 5 to 22 days throughout the twenty-first century. 5% of the longest events will last for more than one month. The amplitude is overwhelming

Kinetic Energy from Supernova Feedback in High-resolution Galaxy Simulations

Science.gov (United States)

Simpson, Christine M.; Bryan, Greg L.; Hummels, Cameron; Ostriker, Jeremiah P.

2015-08-01

We describe a new method for adding a prescribed amount of kinetic energy to simulated gas modeled on a cartesian grid by directly altering grid cells’ mass and velocity in a distributed fashion. The method is explored in the context of supernova (SN) feedback in high-resolution (˜10 pc) hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy formation. Resolution dependence is a primary consideration in our application of the method, and simulations of isolated explosions (performed at different resolutions) motivate a resolution-dependent scaling for the injected fraction of kinetic energy that we apply in cosmological simulations of a 109 M⊙ dwarf halo. We find that in high-density media (≳50 cm-3) with coarse resolution (≳4 pc per cell), results are sensitive to the initial kinetic energy fraction due to early and rapid cooling. In our galaxy simulations, the deposition of small amounts of SN energy in kinetic form (as little as 1%) has a dramatic impact on the evolution of the system, resulting in an order-of-magnitude suppression of stellar mass. The overall behavior of the galaxy in the two highest resolution simulations we perform appears to converge. We discuss the resulting distribution of stellar metallicities, an observable sensitive to galactic wind properties, and find that while the new method demonstrates increased agreement with observed systems, significant discrepancies remain, likely due to simplistic assumptions that neglect contributions from SNe Ia and stellar winds.

Simulating Climate Change in Ireland

Science.gov (United States)

Nolan, P.; Lynch, P.

2012-04-01

At the Meteorology & Climate Centre at University College Dublin, we are using the CLM-Community's COSMO-CLM Regional Climate Model (RCM) and the WRF RCM (developed at NCAR) to simulate the climate of Ireland at high spatial resolution. To address the issue of model uncertainty, a Multi-Model Ensemble (MME) approach is used. The ensemble method uses different RCMs, driven by several Global Climate Models (GCMs), to simulate climate change. Through the MME approach, the uncertainty in the RCM projections is quantified, enabling us to estimate the probability density function of predicted changes, and providing a measure of confidence in the predictions. The RCMs were validated by performing a 20-year simulation of the Irish climate (1981-2000), driven by ECMWF ERA-40 global re-analysis data, and comparing the output to observations. Results confirm that the output of the RCMs exhibit reasonable and realistic features as documented in the historical data record. Projections for the future Irish climate were generated by downscaling the Max Planck Institute's ECHAM5 GCM, the UK Met Office HadGEM2-ES GCM and the CGCM3.1 GCM from the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling. Simulations were run for a reference period 1961-2000 and future period 2021-2060. The future climate was simulated using the A1B, A2, B1, RCP 4.5 & RCP 8.5 greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Results for the downscaled simulations show a substantial overall increase in precipitation and wind speed for the future winter months and a decrease during the summer months. The predicted annual change in temperature is approximately 1.1°C over Ireland. To date, all RCM projections are in general agreement, thus increasing our confidence in the robustness of the results.

Covariability of seasonal temperature and precipitation over the Iberian Peninsula in high-resolution regional climate simulations (1001-2099)

Science.gov (United States)

Fernández-Montes, S.; Gómez-Navarro, J. J.; Rodrigo, F. S.; García-Valero, J. A.; Montávez, J. P.

2017-04-01

Precipitation and surface temperature are interdependent variables, both as a response to atmospheric dynamics and due to intrinsic thermodynamic relationships and feedbacks between them. This study analyzes the covariability of seasonal temperature (T) and precipitation (P) across the Iberian Peninsula (IP) using regional climate paleosimulations for the period 1001-1990, driven by reconstructions of external forcings. Future climate (1990-2099) was simulated according to SRES scenarios A2 and B2. These simulations enable exploring, at high spatial resolution, robust and physically consistent relationships. In winter, positive P-T correlations dominate west-central IP (Pearson correlation coefficient ρ = + 0.43, for 1001-1990), due to prevalent cold-dry and warm-wet conditions, while this relationship weakens and become negative towards mountainous, northern and eastern regions. In autumn, negative correlations appear in similar regions as in winter, whereas for summer they extend also to the N/NW of the IP. In spring, the whole IP depicts significant negative correlations, strongest for eastern regions (ρ = - 0.51). This is due to prevalent frequency of warm-dry and cold-wet modes in these regions and seasons. At the temporal scale, regional correlation series between seasonal anomalies of temperature and precipitation (assessed in 31 years running windows in 1001-1990) show very large multidecadal variability. For winter and spring, periodicities of about 50-60 years arise. The frequency of warm-dry and cold-wet modes appears correlated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), explaining mainly co-variability changes in spring. For winter and some regions in autumn, maximum and minimum P-T correlations appear in periods with enhanced meridional or easterly circulation (low or high pressure anomalies in the Mediterranean and Europe). In spring and summer, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation shows some fingerprint on the frequency of warm/cold modes. For

Computer simulation of high resolution transmission electron micrographs: theory and analysis

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kilaas, R.

1985-03-01

Computer simulation of electron micrographs is an invaluable aid in their proper interpretation and in defining optimum conditions for obtaining images experimentally. Since modern instruments are capable of atomic resolution, simulation techniques employing high precision are required. This thesis makes contributions to four specific areas of this field. First, the validity of a new method for simulating high resolution electron microscope images has been critically examined. Second, three different methods for computing scattering amplitudes in High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HRTEM) have been investigated as to their ability to include upper Laue layer (ULL) interaction. Third, a new method for computing scattering amplitudes in high resolution transmission electron microscopy has been examined. Fourth, the effect of a surface layer of amorphous silicon dioxide on images of crystalline silicon has been investigated for a range of crystal thicknesses varying from zero to 2 1/2 times that of the surface layer

Micro Climate Simulation in new Town 'Hashtgerd'

Science.gov (United States)

Sodoudi, S.; Langer, I.; Cubasch, U.

2012-04-01

One of the objectives of climatological part of project Young Cities 'Developing Energy-Efficient Urban Fabric in the Tehran-Karaj Region' is to simulate the micro climate (with 1m resolution) in 35ha of new town Hashtgerd, which is located 65 km far from mega city Tehran. The Project aims are developing, implementing and evaluating building and planning schemes and technologies which allow to plan and build sustainable, energy-efficient and climate sensible form mass housing settlements in arid and semi-arid regions ("energy-efficient fabric"). Climate sensitive form also means designing and planning for climate change and its related effects for Hashtgerd New Town. By configuration of buildings and open spaces according to solar radiation, wind and vegetation, climate sensitive urban form can create outdoor thermal comfort. To simulate the climate on small spatial scales, the micro climate model Envi-met has been used to simulate the micro climate in 35 ha. The Eulerian model ENVI-met is a micro-scale climate model which gives information about the influence of architecture and buildings as well as vegetation and green area on the micro climate up to 1 m resolution. Envi-met has been run with information from topography, downscaled climate data with neuro-fuzzy method, meteorological measurements, building height and different vegetation variants (low and high number of trees) Through the optimal Urban Design and Planning for the 35ha area the microclimate results shows, that with vegetation the microclimate in streets will be change: • 2 m temperature is decreased by about 2 K • relative humidity increase by about 10 % • soil temperature is decreased by about 3 K • wind speed is decreased by about 60% The style of buildings allows free movement of air, which is of high importance for fresh air supply. The increase of inbuilt areas in 35 ha reduces the heat island effect through cooling caused by vegetation and increase of air humidity which caused by

Validation of the Regional Climate Model ALARO with different dynamical downscaling approaches and different horizontal resolutions

Science.gov (United States)

Berckmans, Julie; Hamdi, Rafiq; De Troch, Rozemien; Giot, Olivier

2015-04-01

At the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (RMI), climate simulations are performed with the regional climate model (RCM) ALARO, a version of the ALADIN model with improved physical parameterizations. In order to obtain high-resolution information of the regional climate, lateral bounary conditions (LBC) are prescribed from the global climate model (GCM) ARPEGE. Dynamical downscaling is commonly done in a continuous long-term simulation, with the initialisation of the model at the start and driven by the regularly updated LBCs of the GCM. Recently, more interest exists in the dynamical downscaling approach of frequent reinitializations of the climate simulations. For these experiments, the model is initialised daily and driven for 24 hours by the GCM. However, the surface is either initialised daily together with the atmosphere or free to evolve continuously. The surface scheme implemented in ALARO is SURFEX, which can be either run in coupled mode or in stand-alone mode. The regional climate is simulated on different domains, on a 20km horizontal resolution over Western-Europe and a 4km horizontal resolution over Belgium. Besides, SURFEX allows to perform a stand-alone or offline simulation on 1km horizontal resolution over Belgium. This research is in the framework of the project MASC: "Modelling and Assessing Surface Change Impacts on Belgian and Western European Climate", a 4-year project funded by the Belgian Federal Government. The overall aim of the project is to study the feedbacks between climate changes and land surface changes in order to improve regional climate model projections at the decennial scale over Belgium and Western Europe and thus to provide better climate projections and climate change evaluation tools to policy makers, stakeholders and the scientific community.

Role of resolution in regional climate change projections over China

Science.gov (United States)

Shi, Ying; Wang, Guiling; Gao, Xuejie

2017-11-01

This paper investigates the sensitivity of projected future climate changes over China to the horizontal resolution of a regional climate model RegCM4.4 (RegCM), using RCP8.5 as an example. Model validation shows that RegCM performs better in reproducing the spatial distribution and magnitude of present-day temperature, precipitation and climate extremes than the driving global climate model HadGEM2-ES (HadGEM, at 1.875° × 1.25° degree resolution), but little difference is found between the simulations at 50 and 25 km resolutions. Comparison with observational data at different resolutions confirmed the added value of the RCM and finer model resolutions in better capturing the probability distribution of precipitation. However, HadGEM and RegCM at both resolutions project a similar pattern of significant future warming during both winter and summer, and a similar pattern of winter precipitation changes including dominant increase in most areas of northern China and little change or decrease in the southern part. Projected precipitation changes in summer diverge among the three models, especially over eastern China, with a general increase in HadGEM, little change in RegCM at 50 km, and a mix of increase and decrease in RegCM at 25 km resolution. Changes of temperature-related extremes (annual total number of daily maximum temperature > 25 °C, the maximum value of daily maximum temperature, the minimum value of daily minimum temperature in the three simulations especially in the two RegCM simulations are very similar to each other; so are the precipitation-related extremes (maximum consecutive dry days, maximum consecutive 5-day precipitation and extremely wet days' total amount). Overall, results from this study indicate a very low sensitivity of projected changes in this region to model resolution. While fine resolution is critical for capturing the spatial variability of the control climate, it may not be as important for capturing the climate response to

Impact relevance and usability of high resolution climate modeling and data

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Arnott, James C. [Aspen Global Change Inst., Basalt, CO (United States)

2016-10-30

The Aspen Global Change Institute hosted a technical science workshop entitled, “Impact Relevance and Usability of High-Resolution Climate Modeling and Datasets,” on August 2-7, 2015 in Aspen, CO. Kate Calvin (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), Andrew Jones (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) and Jean-François Lamarque (NCAR) served as co-chairs for the workshop. The meeting included the participation of 29 scientists for a total of 145 participant days. Following the workshop, workshop co-chairs authored a meeting report published in Eos on April 27, 2016. Insights from the workshop directly contributed to the formation of a new DOE-supported project co-led by workshop co-chair Andy Jones. A subset of meeting participants continue to work on a publication on institutional innovations that can support the usability of high resolution modeling, among other sources of climate information.

Will high-resolution global ocean models benefit coupled predictions on short-range to climate timescales?

Science.gov (United States)

Hewitt, Helene T.; Bell, Michael J.; Chassignet, Eric P.; Czaja, Arnaud; Ferreira, David; Griffies, Stephen M.; Hyder, Pat; McClean, Julie L.; New, Adrian L.; Roberts, Malcolm J.

2017-12-01

As the importance of the ocean in the weather and climate system is increasingly recognised, operational systems are now moving towards coupled prediction not only for seasonal to climate timescales but also for short-range forecasts. A three-way tension exists between the allocation of computing resources to refine model resolution, the expansion of model complexity/capability, and the increase of ensemble size. Here we review evidence for the benefits of increased ocean resolution in global coupled models, where the ocean component explicitly represents transient mesoscale eddies and narrow boundary currents. We consider lessons learned from forced ocean/sea-ice simulations; from studies concerning the SST resolution required to impact atmospheric simulations; and from coupled predictions. Impacts of the mesoscale ocean in western boundary current regions on the large-scale atmospheric state have been identified. Understanding of air-sea feedback in western boundary currents is modifying our view of the dynamics in these key regions. It remains unclear whether variability associated with open ocean mesoscale eddies is equally important to the large-scale atmospheric state. We include a discussion of what processes can presently be parameterised in coupled models with coarse resolution non-eddying ocean models, and where parameterizations may fall short. We discuss the benefits of resolution and identify gaps in the current literature that leave important questions unanswered.

The evolution of extreme precipitations in high resolution scenarios over France

Science.gov (United States)

Colin, J.; Déqué, M.; Somot, S.

2009-09-01

Over the past years, improving the modelling of extreme events and their variability at climatic time scales has become one of the challenging issue raised in the regional climate research field. This study shows the results of a high resolution (12 km) scenario run over France with the limited area model (LAM) ALADIN-Climat, regarding the representation of extreme precipitations. The runs were conducted in the framework of the ANR-SCAMPEI national project on high resolution scenarios over French mountains. As a first step, we attempt to quantify one of the uncertainties implied by the use of LAM : the size of the area on which the model is run. In particular, we address the issue of whether a relatively small domain allows the model to create its small scale process. Indeed, high resolution scenarios cannot be run on large domains because of the computation time. Therefore one needs to answer this preliminary question before producing and analyzing such scenarios. To do so, we worked in the framework of a « big brother » experiment. We performed a 23-year long global simulation in present-day climate (1979-2001) with the ARPEGE-Climat GCM, at a resolution of approximately 50 km over Europe (stretched grid). This first simulation, named ARP50, constitutes the « big brother » reference of our experiment. It has been validated in comparison with the CRU climatology. Then we filtered the short waves (up to 200 km) from ARP50 in order to obtain the equivalent of coarse resolution lateral boundary conditions (LBC). We have carried out three ALADIN-Climat simulations at a 50 km resolution with these LBC, using different configurations of the model : * FRA50, run over a small domain (2000 x 2000 km, centered over France), * EUR50, run over a larger domain (5000 x 5000 km, centered over France as well), * EUR50-SN, run over the large domain (using spectral nudging). Considering the facts that ARPEGE-Climat and ALADIN-Climat models share the same physics and dynamics

Identifying added value in high-resolution climate simulations over Scandinavia

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mayer, Stephania; Fox Maule, Cathrine; Sobolowski, Stefan

2015-01-01

High-resolution data are needed in order to assess potential impacts of extreme events on infrastructure in the mid-latitudes. Dynamical downscaling offers one way to obtain this information. However, prior to implementation in any impacts assessment scheme, model output must be validated and det...

Scientific workflow and support for high resolution global climate modeling at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility

Science.gov (United States)

Anantharaj, V.; Mayer, B.; Wang, F.; Hack, J.; McKenna, D.; Hartman-Baker, R.

2012-04-01

The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) facilitates the execution of computational experiments that require tens of millions of CPU hours (typically using thousands of processors simultaneously) while generating hundreds of terabytes of data. A set of ultra high resolution climate experiments in progress, using the Community Earth System Model (CESM), will produce over 35,000 files, ranging in sizes from 21 MB to 110 GB each. The execution of the experiments will require nearly 70 Million CPU hours on the Jaguar and Titan supercomputers at OLCF. The total volume of the output from these climate modeling experiments will be in excess of 300 TB. This model output must then be archived, analyzed, distributed to the project partners in a timely manner, and also made available more broadly. Meeting this challenge would require efficient movement of the data, staging the simulation output to a large and fast file system that provides high volume access to other computational systems used to analyze the data and synthesize results. This file system also needs to be accessible via high speed networks to an archival system that can provide long term reliable storage. Ideally this archival system is itself directly available to other systems that can be used to host services making the data and analysis available to the participants in the distributed research project and to the broader climate community. The various resources available at the OLCF now support this workflow. The available systems include the new Jaguar Cray XK6 2.63 petaflops (estimated) supercomputer, the 10 PB Spider center-wide parallel file system, the Lens/EVEREST analysis and visualization system, the HPSS archival storage system, the Earth System Grid (ESG), and the ORNL Climate Data Server (CDS). The ESG features federated services, search & discovery, extensive data handling capabilities, deep storage access, and Live Access Server (LAS) integration. The scientific workflow enabled on

High-resolution integration of water, energy, and climate models to assess electricity grid vulnerabilities to climate change

Science.gov (United States)

Meng, M.; Macknick, J.; Tidwell, V. C.; Zagona, E. A.; Magee, T. M.; Bennett, K.; Middleton, R. S.

2017-12-01

The U.S. electricity sector depends on large amounts of water for hydropower generation and cooling thermoelectric power plants. Variability in water quantity and temperature due to climate change could reduce the performance and reliability of individual power plants and of the electric grid as a system. While studies have modeled water usage in power systems planning, few have linked grid operations with physical water constraints or with climate-induced changes in water resources to capture the role of the energy-water nexus in power systems flexibility and adequacy. In addition, many hydrologic and hydropower models have a limited representation of power sector water demands and grid interaction opportunities of demand response and ancillary services. A multi-model framework was developed to integrate and harmonize electricity, water, and climate models, allowing for high-resolution simulation of the spatial, temporal, and physical dynamics of these interacting systems. The San Juan River basin in the Southwestern U.S., which contains thermoelectric power plants, hydropower facilities, and multiple non-energy water demands, was chosen as a case study. Downscaled data from three global climate models and predicted regional water demand changes were implemented in the simulations. The Variable Infiltration Capacity hydrologic model was used to project inflows, ambient air temperature, and humidity in the San Juan River Basin. Resulting river operations, water deliveries, water shortage sharing agreements, new water demands, and hydroelectricity generation at the basin-scale were estimated with RiverWare. The impacts of water availability and temperature on electric grid dispatch, curtailment, cooling water usage, and electricity generation cost were modeled in PLEXOS. Lack of water availability resulting from climate, new water demands, and shortage sharing agreements will require thermoelectric generators to drastically decrease power production, as much as 50

Dynamically downscaled climate simulations over North America: Methods, evaluation, and supporting documentation for users

Science.gov (United States)

Hostetler, S.W.; Alder, J.R.; Allan, A.M.

2011-01-01

We have completed an array of high-resolution simulations of present and future climate over Western North America (WNA) and Eastern North America (ENA) by dynamically downscaling global climate simulations using a regional climate model, RegCM3. The simulations are intended to provide long time series of internally consistent surface and atmospheric variables for use in climate-related research. In addition to providing high-resolution weather and climate data for the past, present, and future, we have developed an integrated data flow and methodology for processing, summarizing, viewing, and delivering the climate datasets to a wide range of potential users. Our simulations were run over 50- and 15-kilometer model grids in an attempt to capture more of the climatic detail associated with processes such as topographic forcing than can be captured by general circulation models (GCMs). The simulations were run using output from four GCMs. All simulations span the present (for example, 1968-1999), common periods of the future (2040-2069), and two simulations continuously cover 2010-2099. The trace gas concentrations in our simulations were the same as those of the GCMs: the IPCC 20th century time series for 1968-1999 and the A2 time series for simulations of the future. We demonstrate that RegCM3 is capable of producing present day annual and seasonal climatologies of air temperature and precipitation that are in good agreement with observations. Important features of the high-resolution climatology of temperature, precipitation, snow water equivalent (SWE), and soil moisture are consistently reproduced in all model runs over WNA and ENA. The simulations provide a potential range of future climate change for selected decades and display common patterns of the direction and magnitude of changes. As expected, there are some model to model differences that limit interpretability and give rise to uncertainties. Here, we provide background information about the GCMs and

Micro climate Simulation in new Town `Hashtgerd' using downscaled climate data

Science.gov (United States)

Sodoudi, S.

2010-12-01

One of the objectives of climatological part of project Young Cities ‘Developing Energy-Efficient Urban Fabric in the Tehran-Karaj Region’ is to simulate the micro climate (with 1m resolution) in 35ha of new town Hashtgerd, which is located 65 km far from mega city Tehran. The Project aims are developing, implementing and evaluating building and planning schemes and technologies which allow to plan and build sustainable, energy-efficient and climate sensible form mass housing settlements in arid and semi-arid regions (energy-efficient fabric). Climate sensitive form also means designing and planning for climate change and its related effects for Hashtgerd New Town. By configuration of buildings and open spaces according to solar radiation, wind and vegetation, climate sensitive urban form can create outdoor thermal comfort. To simulate the climate on small spatial scales, the micro climate model Envi-met has been used to simulate the micro climate in 35 ha. The Eulerian model ENVI-met is a micro-scale climate model which gives information about the influence of architecture and buildings as well as vegetation and green area on the micro climate up to 1 m resolution. Envi-met has been run with information from topography, downscaled climate data with neuro-fuzzy method, meteorological measurements, building height and different vegetation variants (low and high number of trees) The first results were compared with each other and show In semi-arid climates the protection from solar radiation is of major importance. This can be achieved by implementation of vegetation and geometry of buildings. Due to the geographical location and related sun’s orbit the degree of shading in this area is rather low. Technical construction such awnings have to be implemented. A second important factor is wind. The design follows the idea to block the prevailing winds from west and northwest as well as the hot and dusty winds in summer time from the southeast but at the same time

High Definition Clouds and Precipitation for advancing Climate Prediction (HD(CP)2): Large Eddy Simulation Study Over Germany

Science.gov (United States)

Dipankar, A.; Stevens, B. B.; Zängl, G.; Pondkule, M.; Brdar, S.

2014-12-01

The effect of clouds on large scale dynamics is represented in climate models through parameterization of various processes, of which the parameterization of shallow and deep convection are particularly uncertain. The atmospheric boundary layer, which controls the coupling to the surface, and which defines the scale of shallow convection, is typically 1 km in depth. Thus, simulations on a O(100 m) grid largely obviate the need for such parameterizations. By crossing this threshold of O(100m) grid resolution one can begin thinking of large-eddy simulation (LES), wherein the sub-grid scale parameterization have a sounder theoretical foundation. Substantial initiatives have been taken internationally to approach this threshold. For example, Miura et al., 2007 and Mirakawa et al., 2014 approach this threshold by doing global simulations, with (gradually) decreasing grid resolution, to understand the effect of cloud-resolving scales on the general circulation. Our strategy, on the other hand, is to take a big leap forward by fixing the resolution at O(100 m), and gradually increasing the domain size. We believe that breaking this threshold would greatly help in improving the parameterization schemes and reducing the uncertainty in climate predictions. To take this forward, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research has initiated a project on HD(CP)2 that aims for a limited area LES at resolution O(100 m) using the new unified modeling system ICON (Zängl et al., 2014). In the talk, results from the HD(CP)2 evaluation simulation will be shown that targets high resolution simulation over a small domain around Jülich, Germany. This site is chosen because high resolution HD(CP)2 Observational Prototype Experiment took place in this region from 1.04.2013 to 31.05.2013, in order to critically evaluate the model. Nesting capabilities of ICON is used to gradually increase the resolution from the outermost domain, which is forced from the COSMO-DE data, to the

High-resolution downscaling for hydrological management

Science.gov (United States)

Ulbrich, Uwe; Rust, Henning; Meredith, Edmund; Kpogo-Nuwoklo, Komlan; Vagenas, Christos

2017-04-01

Hydrological modellers and water managers require high-resolution climate data to model regional hydrologies and how these may respond to future changes in the large-scale climate. The ability to successfully model such changes and, by extension, critical infrastructure planning is often impeded by a lack of suitable climate data. This typically takes the form of too-coarse data from climate models, which are not sufficiently detailed in either space or time to be able to support water management decisions and hydrological research. BINGO (Bringing INnovation in onGOing water management; ) aims to bridge the gap between the needs of hydrological modellers and planners, and the currently available range of climate data, with the overarching aim of providing adaptation strategies for climate change-related challenges. Producing the kilometre- and sub-daily-scale climate data needed by hydrologists through continuous simulations is generally computationally infeasible. To circumvent this hurdle, we adopt a two-pronged approach involving (1) selective dynamical downscaling and (2) conditional stochastic weather generators, with the former presented here. We take an event-based approach to downscaling in order to achieve the kilometre-scale input needed by hydrological modellers. Computational expenses are minimized by identifying extremal weather patterns for each BINGO research site in lower-resolution simulations and then only downscaling to the kilometre-scale (convection permitting) those events during which such patterns occur. Here we (1) outline the methodology behind the selection of the events, and (2) compare the modelled precipitation distribution and variability (preconditioned on the extremal weather patterns) with that found in observations.

Propagation Diagnostic Simulations Using High-Resolution Equatorial Plasma Bubble Simulations

Science.gov (United States)

Rino, C. L.; Carrano, C. S.; Yokoyama, T.

2017-12-01

In a recent paper, under review, equatorial-plasma-bubble (EPB) simulations were used to conduct a comparative analysis of the EPB spectra characteristics with high-resolution in-situ measurements from the C/NOFS satellite. EPB realizations sampled in planes perpendicular to magnetic field lines provided well-defined EPB structure at altitudes penetrating both high and low-density regions. The average C/NOFS structure in highly disturbed regions showed nearly identical two-component inverse-power-law spectral characteristics as the measured EPB structure. This paper describes the results of PWE simulations using the same two-dimensional cross-field EPB realizations. New Irregularity Parameter Estimation (IPE) diagnostics, which are based on two-dimensional equivalent-phase-screen theory [A theory of scintillation for two-component power law irregularity spectra: Overview and numerical results, by Charles Carrano and Charles Rino, DOI: 10.1002/2015RS005903], have been successfully applied to extract two-component inverse-power-law parameters from measured intensity spectra. The EPB simulations [Low and Midlatitude Ionospheric Plasma DensityIrregularities and Their Effects on Geomagnetic Field, by Tatsuhiro Yokoyama and Claudia Stolle, DOI 10.1007/s11214-016-0295-7] have sufficient resolution to populate the structure scales (tens of km to hundreds of meters) that cause strong scintillation at GPS frequencies. The simulations provide an ideal geometry whereby the ramifications of varying structure along the propagation path can be investigated. It is well known path-integrated one-dimensional spectra increase the one-dimensional index by one. The relation requires decorrelation along the propagation path. Correlated structure would be interpreted as stochastic total-electron-content (TEC). The simulations are performed with unmodified structure. Because the EPB structure is confined to the central region of the sample planes, edge effects are minimized. Consequently

Near-global climate simulation at 1 km resolution: establishing a performance baseline on 4888 GPUs with COSMO 5.0

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

O. Fuhrer

2018-05-01

Full Text Available The best hope for reducing long-standing global climate model biases is by increasing resolution to the kilometer scale. Here we present results from an ultrahigh-resolution non-hydrostatic climate model for a near-global setup running on the full Piz Daint supercomputer on 4888 GPUs (graphics processing units. The dynamical core of the model has been completely rewritten using a domain-specific language (DSL for performance portability across different hardware architectures. Physical parameterizations and diagnostics have been ported using compiler directives. To our knowledge this represents the first complete atmospheric model being run entirely on accelerators on this scale. At a grid spacing of 930 m (1.9 km, we achieve a simulation throughput of 0.043 (0.23 simulated years per day and an energy consumption of 596 MWh per simulated year. Furthermore, we propose a new memory usage efficiency (MUE metric that considers how efficiently the memory bandwidth – the dominant bottleneck of climate codes – is being used.

Med-CORDEX: a first coordinated inter-comparison of high-resolution and fully coupled regional climate models for the Mediterranean

Science.gov (United States)

Somot, Samuel

2015-04-01

Due to its geographical, meteorological and oceanographic features, the Mediterranean region can be considered as one of the best place to test and use regional climate modelling tools. It has been chosen as one of the CORDEX sub-domain (MED) leading to the Med-CORDEX initiative. This open and voluntary initiative, financially supported by MISTRALS/HyMeX, has been proposed by the Mediterranean climate modelling research community as a follow-up of previous initiatives. In addition to the CORDEX-like simulations (Atmosphere-RCM, 50 km, ERA-Interim and GCM driven runs), Med-CORDEX includes additional simulations to experiment some of the regional climate modelling current challenges. We present here the status and results of these additional simulations dedicated to the use of (1) very high-resolution Regional Climate Models (RCM, up to 10 km) and (2) fully coupled Regional Climate System Models (RCSM), coupling the various components of the regional climate (atmosphere, land surface and hydrology, river and ocean). Today, Med-CORDEX gathers 23 different modelling groups from 9 different countries (France, Italy, Spain, Serbia, Turkey, Greece, Tunisia, Germany, Hungary) in Europe, Middle-East and North-Africa. They use 12 different atmosphere RCMs including land-surface representation, 4 river models, 10 regional ocean models and 12 different Regional Climate System Models. Almost all the simulations planned (Evaluation, Historical and Scenarios modes) have been completed by the modelling teams. More than half of the runs are archived and freely available for non-commercial use through a dedicated database hosted at ENEA at www.medcordex.eu in common and standardized netcdf format (265,000 files and 3.6 Tb uploaded). This includes atmosphere-only, ocean-only and fully coupled regional climate models. In particular multi-model regional ocean simulations have been archived in a common and standardized format for the first time in the history of the Mediterranean Sea

Assessing the importance of spatio-temporal RCM resolution when estimating sub-daily extreme precipitation under current and future climate conditions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sunyer Pinya, Maria Antonia; Luchner, J.; Onof, C.

2017-01-01

extreme precipitation over Denmark generated by the regional climate model (RCM) HIRHAM-ECEARTH at different spatial resolutions (8, 12, 25 and 50km), three RCM from the RiskChange project at 8km resolution and three RCMs from ENSEMBLES at 25km resolution at temporal aggregations from 1 to 48h...... are more skewed than the observational dataset, which leads to an overestimation by the higher spatial resolution simulations. Nevertheless, in general, under current conditions RCM simulations at high spatial resolution represent extreme events and high-order moments better. The changes projected...

Evolving Storage and Cyber Infrastructure at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation

Science.gov (United States)

Salmon, Ellen; Duffy, Daniel; Spear, Carrie; Sinno, Scott; Vaughan, Garrison; Bowen, Michael

2018-01-01

This talk will describe recent developments at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation, which is funded by NASAs Science Mission Directorate, and supports the specialized data storage and computational needs of weather, ocean, and climate researchers, as well as astrophysicists, heliophysicists, and planetary scientists. To meet requirements for higher-resolution, higher-fidelity simulations, the NCCS augments its High Performance Computing (HPC) and storage retrieval environment. As the petabytes of model and observational data grow, the NCCS is broadening data services offerings and deploying and expanding virtualization resources for high performance analytics.

Final Progress Report: Collaborative Research: Decadal-to-Centennial Climate & Climate Change Studies with Enhanced Variable and Uniform Resolution GCMs Using Advanced Numerical Techniques

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Fox-Rabinovitz, M; Cote, J

2009-06-05

The joint U.S-Canadian project has been devoted to: (a) decadal climate studies using developed state-of-the-art GCMs (General Circulation Models) with enhanced variable and uniform resolution; (b) development and implementation of advanced numerical techniques; (c) research in parallel computing and associated numerical methods; (d) atmospheric chemistry experiments related to climate issues; (e) validation of regional climate modeling strategies for nested- and stretched-grid models. The variable-resolution stretched-grid (SG) GCMs produce accurate and cost-efficient regional climate simulations with mesoscale resolution. The advantage of the stretched grid approach is that it allows us to preserve the high quality of both global and regional circulations while providing consistent interactions between global and regional scales and phenomena. The major accomplishment for the project has been the successful international SGMIP-1 and SGMIP-2 (Stretched-Grid Model Intercomparison Project, phase-1 and phase-2) based on this research developments and activities. The SGMIP provides unique high-resolution regional and global multi-model ensembles beneficial for regional climate modeling and broader modeling community. The U.S SGMIP simulations have been produced using SciDAC ORNL supercomputers. Collaborations with other international participants M. Deque (Meteo-France) and J. McGregor (CSIRO, Australia) and their centers and groups have been beneficial for the strong joint effort, especially for the SGMIP activities. The WMO/WCRP/WGNE endorsed the SGMIP activities in 2004-2008. This project reflects a trend in the modeling and broader communities to move towards regional and sub-regional assessments and applications important for the U.S. and Canadian public, business and policy decision makers, as well as for international collaborations on regional, and especially climate related issues.

Next-Generation Climate Modeling Science Challenges for Simulation, Workflow and Analysis Systems

Science.gov (United States)

Koch, D. M.; Anantharaj, V. G.; Bader, D. C.; Krishnan, H.; Leung, L. R.; Ringler, T.; Taylor, M.; Wehner, M. F.; Williams, D. N.

2016-12-01

We will present two examples of current and future high-resolution climate-modeling research that are challenging existing simulation run-time I/O, model-data movement, storage and publishing, and analysis. In each case, we will consider lessons learned as current workflow systems are broken by these large-data science challenges, as well as strategies to repair or rebuild the systems. First we consider the science and workflow challenges to be posed by the CMIP6 multi-model HighResMIP, involving around a dozen modeling groups performing quarter-degree simulations, in 3-member ensembles for 100 years, with high-frequency (1-6 hourly) diagnostics, which is expected to generate over 4PB of data. An example of science derived from these experiments will be to study how resolution affects the ability of models to capture extreme-events such as hurricanes or atmospheric rivers. Expected methods to transfer (using parallel Globus) and analyze (using parallel "TECA" software tools) HighResMIP data for such feature-tracking by the DOE CASCADE project will be presented. A second example will be from the Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) project, which is currently addressing challenges involving multiple century-scale coupled high resolution (quarter-degree) climate simulations on DOE Leadership Class computers. ACME is anticipating production of over 5PB of data during the next 2 years of simulations, in order to investigate the drivers of water cycle changes, sea-level-rise, and carbon cycle evolution. The ACME workflow, from simulation to data transfer, storage, analysis and publication will be presented. Current and planned methods to accelerate the workflow, including implementing run-time diagnostics, and implementing server-side analysis to avoid moving large datasets will be presented.

Eastern equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature annual cycle in the Kiel climate model: simulation benefits from enhancing atmospheric resolution

Science.gov (United States)

Wengel, C.; Latif, M.; Park, W.; Harlaß, J.; Bayr, T.

2018-05-01

A long-standing difficulty of climate models is to capture the annual cycle (AC) of eastern equatorial Pacific (EEP) sea surface temperature (SST). In this study, we first examine the EEP SST AC in a set of integrations of the coupled Kiel Climate Model, in which only atmosphere model resolution differs. When employing coarse horizontal and vertical atmospheric resolution, significant biases in the EEP SST AC are observed. These are reflected in an erroneous timing of the cold tongue's onset and termination as well as in an underestimation of the boreal spring warming amplitude. A large portion of these biases are linked to a wrong simulation of zonal surface winds, which can be traced back to precipitation biases on both sides of the equator and an erroneous low-level atmospheric circulation over land. Part of the SST biases also is related to shortwave radiation biases related to cloud cover biases. Both wind and cloud cover biases are inherent to the atmospheric component, as shown by companion uncoupled atmosphere model integrations forced by observed SSTs. Enhancing atmosphere model resolution, horizontal and vertical, markedly reduces zonal wind and cloud cover biases in coupled as well as uncoupled mode and generally improves simulation of the EEP SST AC. Enhanced atmospheric resolution reduces convection biases and improves simulation of surface winds over land. Analysis of a subset of models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) reveals that in these models, very similar mechanisms are at work in driving EEP SST AC biases.

A high-resolution regional reanalysis for Europe

Science.gov (United States)

Ohlwein, C.

2015-12-01

Reanalyses gain more and more importance as a source of meteorological information for many purposes and applications. Several global reanalyses projects (e.g., ERA, MERRA, CSFR, JMA9) produce and verify these data sets to provide time series as long as possible combined with a high data quality. Due to a spatial resolution down to 50-70km and 3-hourly temporal output, they are not suitable for small scale problems (e.g., regional climate assessment, meso-scale NWP verification, input for subsequent models such as river runoff simulations). The implementation of regional reanalyses based on a limited area model along with a data assimilation scheme is able to generate reanalysis data sets with high spatio-temporal resolution. Within the Hans-Ertel-Centre for Weather Research (HErZ), the climate monitoring branch concentrates efforts on the assessment and analysis of regional climate in Germany and Europe. In joint cooperation with DWD (German Meteorological Service), a high-resolution reanalysis system based on the COSMO model has been developed. The regional reanalysis for Europe matches the domain of the CORDEX EURO-11 specifications, albeit at a higher spatial resolution, i.e., 0.055° (6km) instead of 0.11° (12km) and comprises the assimilation of observational data using the existing nudging scheme of COSMO complemented by a special soil moisture analysis with boundary conditions provided by ERA-Interim data. The reanalysis data set covers the past 20 years. Extensive evaluation of the reanalysis is performed using independent observations with special emphasis on precipitation and high-impact weather situations indicating a better representation of small scale variability. Further, the evaluation shows an added value of the regional reanalysis with respect to the forcing ERA Interim reanalysis and compared to a pure high-resolution dynamical downscaling approach without data assimilation.

A new framework for the analysis of continental-scale convection-resolving climate simulations

Science.gov (United States)

Leutwyler, D.; Charpilloz, C.; Arteaga, A.; Ban, N.; Di Girolamo, S.; Fuhrer, O.; Hoefler, T.; Schulthess, T. C.; Christoph, S.

2017-12-01

High-resolution climate simulations at horizontal resolution of O(1-4 km) allow explicit treatment of deep convection (thunderstorms and rain showers). Explicitly treating convection by the governing equations reduces uncertainties associated with parametrization schemes and allows a model formulation closer to physical first principles [1,2]. But kilometer-scale climate simulations with long integration periods and large computational domains are expensive and data storage becomes unbearably voluminous. Hence new approaches to perform analysis are required. In the crCLIM project we propose a new climate modeling framework that allows scientists to conduct analysis at high spatial and temporal resolution. We tackle the computational cost by using the largest available supercomputers such as hybrid CPU-GPU architectures. For this the COSMO model has been adapted to run on such architectures [2]. We then alleviate the I/O-bottleneck by employing a simulation data-virtualizer (SDaVi) that allows to trade-off storage (space) for computational effort (time). This is achieved by caching the simulation outputs and efficiently launching re-simulations in case of cache misses. All this is done transparently from the analysis applications [3]. For the re-runs this approach requires a bit-reproducible version of COSMO. That is to say a model that produces identical results on different architectures to ensure coherent recomputation of the requested data [4]. In this contribution we present a version of SDaVi, a first performance model, and a strategy to obtain bit-reproducibility across hardware architectures.[1] N. Ban, J. Schmidli, C. Schär. Evaluation of the convection-resolving regional climate modeling approach in decade-long simulations. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 7889-7907, 2014.[2] D. Leutwyler, O. Fuhrer, X. Lapillonne, D. Lüthi, C. Schär. Towards European-scale convection-resolving climate simulations with GPUs: a study with COSMO 4.19. Geosci. Model Dev, 3393

Evaluating the response of Lake Prespa (SW Balkan) to future climate change projections from a high-resolution model

Science.gov (United States)

van der Schriek, Tim; Varotsos, Konstantinos V.; Giannakopoulos, Christos

2017-04-01

precipitation over the Prespa catchment were simulated with this high horizontal resolution (12 × 12 km) regional climate model. Lake temperatures were derived from surface temperatures based on physical models, while water levels were calculated with the lake water balance model. Climate simulations indicate that annual- and wet season catchment precipitation does not significantly change by the end of the century. The median precipitation decreases, while precipitation variability increases. The percentage of annual precipitation falling in the wet season increases by 5-10%, indicating a stronger seasonality in the precipitation regime. Summer (lake) temperatures and lake surface evaporation will rise significantly under both explored climate change scenarios. Lake impact projections indicate that evaporation changes will cause the water level of Lake Megali Prespa to fall by 5m to 840-839m. The increased precipitation variability will cause large inter-annual water level fluctuations. Average water level may fall even further if: (1) drier summers lead to more water abstraction for irrigation, and (2) there is a reduction in winter snowfall/accumulation and thus less discharge. These findings are of key importance for developing sustainable lake water resource management in a region that is highly vulnerable to future climate change and already experiences significant water stress. Research paves the way for innovative management adaptation strategies focussed on decreasing water abstraction, for example through introducing smart irrigation and selecting more water efficient crops.

A regional climate model for northern Europe: model description and results from the downscaling of two GCM control simulations

Science.gov (United States)

Rummukainen, M.; Räisänen, J.; Bringfelt, B.; Ullerstig, A.; Omstedt, A.; Willén, U.; Hansson, U.; Jones, C.

This work presents a regional climate model, the Rossby Centre regional Atmospheric model (RCA1), recently developed from the High Resolution Limited Area Model (HIRLAM). The changes in the HIRLAM parametrizations, necessary for climate-length integrations, are described. A regional Baltic Sea ocean model and a modeling system for the Nordic inland lake systems have been coupled with RCA1. The coupled system has been used to downscale 10-year time slices from two different general circulation model (GCM) simulations to provide high-resolution regional interpretation of large-scale modeling. A selection of the results from the control runs, i.e. the present-day climate simulations, are presented: large-scale free atmospheric fields, the surface temperature and precipitation results and results for the on-line simulated regional ocean and lake surface climates. The regional model modifies the surface climate description compared to the GCM simulations, but it is also substantially affected by the biases in the GCM simulations. The regional model also improves the representation of the regional ocean and the inland lakes, compared to the GCM results.

A regional climate model for northern Europe: model description and results from the downscaling of two GCM control simulations

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Rummukainen, M.; Raeisaenen, J.; Bringfelt, B.; Ullerstig, A.; Omstedt, A.; Willen, U.; Hansson, U.; Jones, C. [Rossby Centre, Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Inst., Norrkoeping (Sweden)

2001-03-01

This work presents a regional climate model, the Rossby Centre regional Atmospheric model (RCA1), recently developed from the High Resolution Limited Area Model (HIRLAM). The changes in the HIRLAM parametrizations, necessary for climate-length integrations, are described. A regional Baltic Sea ocean model and a modeling system for the Nordic inland lake systems have been coupled with RCA1. The coupled system has been used to downscale 10-year time slices from two different general circulation model (GCM) simulations to provide high-resolution regional interpretation of large-scale modeling. A selection of the results from the control runs, i.e. the present-day climate simulations, are presented: large-scale free atmospheric fields, the surface temperature and precipitation results and results for the on-line simulated regional ocean and lake surface climates. The regional model modifies the surface climate description compared to the GCM simulations, but it is also substantially affected by the biases in the GCM simulations. The regional model also improves the representation of the regional ocean and the inland lakes, compared to the GCM results. (orig.)

Spontaneous abrupt climate change due to an atmospheric blocking-sea-ice-ocean feedback in an unforced climate model simulation.

Science.gov (United States)

Drijfhout, Sybren; Gleeson, Emily; Dijkstra, Henk A; Livina, Valerie

2013-12-03

Abrupt climate change is abundant in geological records, but climate models rarely have been able to simulate such events in response to realistic forcing. Here we report on a spontaneous abrupt cooling event, lasting for more than a century, with a temperature anomaly similar to that of the Little Ice Age. The event was simulated in the preindustrial control run of a high-resolution climate model, without imposing external perturbations. Initial cooling started with a period of enhanced atmospheric blocking over the eastern subpolar gyre. In response, a southward progression of the sea-ice margin occurred, and the sea-level pressure anomaly was locked to the sea-ice margin through thermal forcing. The cold-core high steered more cold air to the area, reinforcing the sea-ice concentration anomaly east of Greenland. The sea-ice surplus was carried southward by ocean currents around the tip of Greenland. South of 70 °N, sea ice already started melting and the associated freshwater anomaly was carried to the Labrador Sea, shutting off deep convection. There, surface waters were exposed longer to atmospheric cooling and sea surface temperature dropped, causing an even larger thermally forced high above the Labrador Sea. In consequence, east of Greenland, anomalous winds changed from north to south, terminating the event with similar abruptness to its onset. Our results imply that only climate models that possess sufficient resolution to correctly represent atmospheric blocking, in combination with a sensitive sea-ice model, are able to simulate this kind of abrupt climate change.

The Impact Snow Albedo Feedback over Mountain Regions as Examined through High-Resolution Regional Climate Change Experiments over the Rocky Mountains

Science.gov (United States)

Letcher, Theodore

As the climate warms, the snow albedo feedback (SAF) will play a substantial role in shaping the climate response of mid-latitude mountain regions with transient snow cover. One such region is the Rocky Mountains of the western United States where large snow packs accumulate during the winter and persist throughout the spring. In this dissertation, the Weather Research and Forecast model (WRF) configured as a regional climate model is used to investigate the role of the SAF in determining the regional climate response to forced anthropogenic climate change. The regional effects of climate change are investigated by using the pseudo global warming (PGW) framework, which is an experimental configuration in a which a mean climate perturbation is added to the boundary forcing of a regional model, thus preserving the large-scale circulation entering the region through the model boundaries and isolating the mesoscale climate response. Using this framework, the impact of the SAF on the regional energetics and atmospheric dynamics is examined and quantified. Linear feedback analysis is used to quantify the strength of the SAF over the Headwaters region of the Colorado Rockies for a series of high-resolution PGW experiments. This technique is used to test sensitivity of the feedback strength to model resolution and land surface model. Over the Colorado Rockies, and integrated over the entire spring season, the SAF strength is largely insensitive to model resolution, however there are more substantial differences on the sub-seasonal (monthly) timescale. In contrast, the SAF strength over this region is very sensitive to choice of land surface model. These simulations are also used to investigate how spatial and diurnal variability in warming caused by the SAF influences the dynamics of thermally driven mountain-breeze circulations. It is shown that, the SAF causes stronger daytime mountain-breeze circulations by increasing the warming on the mountains slopes thus enhancing

Introducing Enabling Computational Tools to the Climate Sciences: Multi-Resolution Climate Modeling with Adaptive Cubed-Sphere Grids

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Jablonowski, Christiane [Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)

2015-07-14

The research investigates and advances strategies how to bridge the scale discrepancies between local, regional and global phenomena in climate models without the prohibitive computational costs of global cloud-resolving simulations. In particular, the research explores new frontiers in computational geoscience by introducing high-order Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) techniques into climate research. AMR and statically-adapted variable-resolution approaches represent an emerging trend for atmospheric models and are likely to become the new norm in future-generation weather and climate models. The research advances the understanding of multi-scale interactions in the climate system and showcases a pathway how to model these interactions effectively with advanced computational tools, like the Chombo AMR library developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The research is interdisciplinary and combines applied mathematics, scientific computing and the atmospheric sciences. In this research project, a hierarchy of high-order atmospheric models on cubed-sphere computational grids have been developed that serve as an algorithmic prototype for the finite-volume solution-adaptive Chombo-AMR approach. The foci of the investigations have lied on the characteristics of both static mesh adaptations and dynamically-adaptive grids that can capture flow fields of interest like tropical cyclones. Six research themes have been chosen. These are (1) the introduction of adaptive mesh refinement techniques into the climate sciences, (2) advanced algorithms for nonhydrostatic atmospheric dynamical cores, (3) an assessment of the interplay between resolved-scale dynamical motions and subgrid-scale physical parameterizations, (4) evaluation techniques for atmospheric model hierarchies, (5) the comparison of AMR refinement strategies and (6) tropical cyclone studies with a focus on multi-scale interactions and variable-resolution modeling. The results of this research project

Alleviating tropical Atlantic sector biases in the Kiel climate model by enhancing horizontal and vertical atmosphere model resolution: climatology and interannual variability

Science.gov (United States)

Harlaß, Jan; Latif, Mojib; Park, Wonsun

2018-04-01

We investigate the quality of simulating tropical Atlantic (TA) sector climatology and interannual variability in integrations of the Kiel climate model (KCM) with varying atmosphere model resolution. The ocean model resolution is kept fixed. A reasonable simulation of TA sector annual-mean climate, seasonal cycle and interannual variability can only be achieved at sufficiently high horizontal and vertical atmospheric resolution. Two major reasons for the improvements are identified. First, the western equatorial Atlantic westerly surface wind bias in spring can be largely eliminated, which is explained by a better representation of meridional and especially vertical zonal momentum transport. The enhanced atmospheric circulation along the equator in turn greatly improves the thermal structure of the upper equatorial Atlantic with much reduced warm sea surface temperature (SST) biases. Second, the coastline in the southeastern TA and steep orography are better resolved at high resolution, which improves wind structure and in turn reduces warm SST biases in the Benguela upwelling region. The strongly diminished wind and SST biases at high atmosphere model resolution allow for a more realistic latitudinal position of the intertropical convergence zone. Resulting stronger cross-equatorial winds, in conjunction with a shallower thermocline, enable a rapid cold tongue development in the eastern TA in boreal spring. This enables simulation of realistic interannual SST variability and its seasonal phase locking in the KCM, which primarily is the result of a stronger thermocline feedback. Our findings suggest that enhanced atmospheric resolution, both vertical and horizontal, could be a key to achieving more realistic simulation of TA climatology and interannual variability in climate models.

The high-resolution regional reanalysis COSMO-REA6

Science.gov (United States)

Ohlwein, C.

2016-12-01

Reanalyses gain more and more importance as a source of meteorological information for many purposes and applications. Several global reanalyses projects (e.g., ERA, MERRA, CSFR, JMA9) produce and verify these data sets to provide time series as long as possible combined with a high data quality. Due to a spatial resolution down to 50-70km and 3-hourly temporal output, they are not suitable for small scale problems (e.g., regional climate assessment, meso-scale NWP verification, input for subsequent models such as river runoff simulations). The implementation of regional reanalyses based on a limited area model along with a data assimilation scheme is able to generate reanalysis data sets with high spatio-temporal resolution. Within the Hans-Ertel-Centre for Weather Research (HErZ), the climate monitoring branch concentrates efforts on the assessment and analysis of regional climate in Germany and Europe. In joint cooperation with DWD (German Meteorological Service), a high-resolution reanalysis system based on the COSMO model has been developed. The regional reanalysis for Europe matches the domain of the CORDEX EURO-11 specifications, albeit at a higher spatial resolution, i.e., 0.055° (6km) instead of 0.11° (12km) and comprises the assimilation of observational data using the existing nudging scheme of COSMO complemented by a special soil moisture analysis with boundary conditions provided by ERA-Interim data. The reanalysis data set covers the past 20 years. Extensive evaluation of the reanalysis is performed using independent observations with special emphasis on precipitation and high-impact weather situations indicating a better representation of small scale variability. Further, the evaluation shows an added value of the regional reanalysis with respect to the forcing ERA Interim reanalysis and compared to a pure high-resolution dynamical downscaling approach without data assimilation.

The impact of resolution on the adjustment and decadal variability of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation in a coupled climate model

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hodson, Daniel L.R.; Sutton, Rowan T. [University of Reading, NCAS-Climate, Department of Meteorology, Earley Gate, PO Box 243, Reading (United Kingdom)

2012-12-15

Variations in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC) exert an important influence on climate, particularly on decadal time scales. Simulation of the MOC in coupled climate models is compromised, to a degree that is unknown, by their lack of fidelity in resolving some of the key processes involved. There is an overarching need to increase the resolution and fidelity of climate models, but also to assess how increases in resolution influence the simulation of key phenomena such as the MOC. In this study we investigate the impact of significantly increasing the (ocean and atmosphere) resolution of a coupled climate model on the simulation of MOC variability by comparing high and low resolution versions of the same model. In both versions, decadal variability of the MOC is closely linked to density anomalies that propagate from the Labrador Sea southward along the deep western boundary. We demonstrate that the MOC adjustment proceeds more rapidly in the higher resolution model due the increased speed of western boundary waves. However, the response of the Atlantic sea surface temperatures to MOC variations is relatively robust - in pattern if not in magnitude - across the two resolutions. The MOC also excites a coupled ocean-atmosphere response in the tropical Atlantic in both model versions. In the higher resolution model, but not the lower resolution model, there is evidence of a significant response in the extratropical atmosphere over the North Atlantic 6 years after a maximum in the MOC. In both models there is evidence of a weak negative feedback on deep density anomalies in the Labrador Sea, and hence on the MOC (with a time scale of approximately ten years). Our results highlight the need for further work to understand the decadal variability of the MOC and its simulation in climate models. (orig.)

Global agricultural land resources--a high resolution suitability evaluation and its perspectives until 2100 under climate change conditions.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Florian Zabel

Full Text Available Changing natural conditions determine the land's suitability for agriculture. The growing demand for food, feed, fiber and bioenergy increases pressure on land and causes trade-offs between different uses of land and ecosystem services. Accordingly, an inventory is required on the changing potentially suitable areas for agriculture under changing climate conditions. We applied a fuzzy logic approach to compute global agricultural suitability to grow the 16 most important food and energy crops according to the climatic, soil and topographic conditions at a spatial resolution of 30 arc seconds. We present our results for current climate conditions (1981-2010, considering today's irrigated areas and separately investigate the suitability of densely forested as well as protected areas, in order to investigate their potentials for agriculture. The impact of climate change under SRES A1B conditions, as simulated by the global climate model ECHAM5, on agricultural suitability is shown by comparing the time-period 2071-2100 with 1981-2010. Our results show that climate change will expand suitable cropland by additionally 5.6 million km2, particularly in the Northern high latitudes (mainly in Canada, China and Russia. Most sensitive regions with decreasing suitability are found in the Global South, mainly in tropical regions, where also the suitability for multiple cropping decreases.

Resolution on the program energy-climate; Resolution sur le paquet energie-climat

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

2008-07-01

This document presents the resolutions proposed in the resolution proposition n. 1261 and concerning the european Commission program on the energy policies and the climate change. Twelve resolution are presented on the energy sources development, the energy efficiency, the energy economy and the carbon taxes. (A.L.B.)

Montecarlo simulation for a new high resolution elemental analysis methodology

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Figueroa S, Rodolfo; Brusa, Daniel; Riveros, Alberto [Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco (Chile). Facultad de Ingenieria y Administracion

1996-12-31

Full text. Spectra generated by binary, ternary and multielement matrixes when irradiated by a variable energy photon beam are simulated by means of a Monte Carlo code. Significative jumps in the counting rate are shown when the photon energy is just over the edge associated to each element, because of the emission of characteristic X rays. For a given associated energy, the net height of these jumps depends mainly on the concentration and of the sample absorption coefficient. The spectra were obtained by a monochromatic energy scan considering all the emitted radiation by the sample in a 2{pi} solid angle, associating a single multichannel spectrometer channel to each incident energy (Multichannel Scaling (MCS) mode). The simulated spectra were made with Monte Carlo simulation software adaptation of the package called PENELOPE (Penetration and Energy Loss of Positrons and Electrons in matter). The results show that it is possible to implement a new high resolution spectroscopy methodology, where a synchrotron would be an ideal source, due to the high intensity and ability to control the energy of the incident beam. The high energy resolution would be determined by the monochromating system and not by the detection system and not by the detection system, which would basicalbe a photon counter. (author)

Montecarlo simulation for a new high resolution elemental analysis methodology

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Figueroa S, Rodolfo; Brusa, Daniel; Riveros, Alberto

1996-01-01

Full text. Spectra generated by binary, ternary and multielement matrixes when irradiated by a variable energy photon beam are simulated by means of a Monte Carlo code. Significative jumps in the counting rate are shown when the photon energy is just over the edge associated to each element, because of the emission of characteristic X rays. For a given associated energy, the net height of these jumps depends mainly on the concentration and of the sample absorption coefficient. The spectra were obtained by a monochromatic energy scan considering all the emitted radiation by the sample in a 2π solid angle, associating a single multichannel spectrometer channel to each incident energy (Multichannel Scaling (MCS) mode). The simulated spectra were made with Monte Carlo simulation software adaptation of the package called PENELOPE (Penetration and Energy Loss of Positrons and Electrons in matter). The results show that it is possible to implement a new high resolution spectroscopy methodology, where a synchrotron would be an ideal source, due to the high intensity and ability to control the energy of the incident beam. The high energy resolution would be determined by the monochromating system and not by the detection system and not by the detection system, which would basicalbe a photon counter. (author)

Towards multi-resolution global climate modeling with ECHAM6-FESOM. Part II: climate variability

Science.gov (United States)

Rackow, T.; Goessling, H. F.; Jung, T.; Sidorenko, D.; Semmler, T.; Barbi, D.; Handorf, D.

2018-04-01

This study forms part II of two papers describing ECHAM6-FESOM, a newly established global climate model with a unique multi-resolution sea ice-ocean component. While part I deals with the model description and the mean climate state, here we examine the internal climate variability of the model under constant present-day (1990) conditions. We (1) assess the internal variations in the model in terms of objective variability performance indices, (2) analyze variations in global mean surface temperature and put them in context to variations in the observed record, with particular emphasis on the recent warming slowdown, (3) analyze and validate the most common atmospheric and oceanic variability patterns, (4) diagnose the potential predictability of various climate indices, and (5) put the multi-resolution approach to the test by comparing two setups that differ only in oceanic resolution in the equatorial belt, where one ocean mesh keeps the coarse 1° resolution applied in the adjacent open-ocean regions and the other mesh is gradually refined to 0.25°. Objective variability performance indices show that, in the considered setups, ECHAM6-FESOM performs overall favourably compared to five well-established climate models. Internal variations of the global mean surface temperature in the model are consistent with observed fluctuations and suggest that the recent warming slowdown can be explained as a once-in-one-hundred-years event caused by internal climate variability; periods of strong cooling in the model (`hiatus' analogs) are mainly associated with ENSO-related variability and to a lesser degree also to PDO shifts, with the AMO playing a minor role. Common atmospheric and oceanic variability patterns are simulated largely consistent with their real counterparts. Typical deficits also found in other models at similar resolutions remain, in particular too weak non-seasonal variability of SSTs over large parts of the ocean and episodic periods of almost absent

A high-resolution, empirical approach to climate impact assessment for regulatory analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Delgado, M.; Simcock, J. G.; Greenstone, M.; Hsiang, S. M.; Kopp, R. E.; Carleton, T.; Hultgren, A.; Jina, A.; Rising, J. A.; Nath, I.; Yuan, J.; Rode, A.; Chong, T.; Dobbels, G.; Hussain, A.; Wang, J.; Song, Y.; Mohan, S.; Larsen, K.; Houser, T.

2017-12-01

Recent breakthroughs in computing, data availability, and methodology have precipitated significant advances in the understanding of the relationship between climate and socioeconomic outcomes [1]. And while the use of estimates of the global marginal costs of greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. the SCC) are a mandatory component of regulatory policy in many jurisdictions, existing SCC-IAMs have lagged advances in impact assessment and valuation [2]. Recent work shows that incorporating high spatial and temporal resolution can significantly affect the observed relationships of economic outcomes to climate and socioeconomic factors [3] and that maintaining this granularity is critical to understanding the sensitivity of aggregate measures of valuation to inequality and risk adjustment methodologies [4]. We propose a novel framework that decomposes uncertainty in the SCC along multiple sources, including aggregate climate response parameters, the translation of global climate into local weather, the effect of weather on physical and economic systems, human and macro-economic responses, and impact valuation methodologies. This work extends Hsiang et al. (2017) [4] to directly estimate local response functions for multiple sectors in each of 24,378 global regions and to estimate impacts at this resolution daily, incorporating endogenous, empirically-estimated adaptation and costs. The goal of this work is to provide insight into the heterogeneity of climate impacts and to work with other modeling teams to enhance the empirical grounding of integrated climate impact assessment in more complex energy-environment-economics models. [1] T. Carleton and S. Hsiang (2016), DOI: 10.1126/science.aad9837. [2] National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2017), DOI: 10.17226/24651. [3] Burke, M., S. Hsiang, and E. Miguel (2015), DOI: 10.1038/nature15725. [4] S. Hsiang et al. (2017), DOI: 10.1126/science.aal4369.

An analysis of MM5 sensitivity to different parameterizations for high-resolution climate simulations

Science.gov (United States)

Argüeso, D.; Hidalgo-Muñoz, J. M.; Gámiz-Fortis, S. R.; Esteban-Parra, M. J.; Castro-Díez, Y.

2009-04-01

An evaluation of MM5 mesoscale model sensitivity to different parameterizations schemes is presented in terms of temperature and precipitation for high-resolution integrations over Andalusia (South of Spain). As initial and boundary conditions ERA-40 Reanalysis data are used. Two domains were used, a coarse one with dimensions of 55 by 60 grid points with spacing of 30 km and a nested domain of 48 by 72 grid points grid spaced 10 km. Coarse domain fully covers Iberian Peninsula and Andalusia fits loosely in the finer one. In addition to parameterization tests, two dynamical downscaling techniques have been applied in order to examine the influence of initial conditions on RCM long-term studies. Regional climate studies usually employ continuous integration for the period under survey, initializing atmospheric fields only at the starting point and feeding boundary conditions regularly. An alternative approach is based on frequent re-initialization of atmospheric fields; hence the simulation is divided in several independent integrations. Altogether, 20 simulations have been performed using varying physics options, of which 4 were fulfilled applying the re-initialization technique. Surface temperature and accumulated precipitation (daily and monthly scale) were analyzed for a 5-year period covering from 1990 to 1994. Results have been compared with daily observational data series from 110 stations for temperature and 95 for precipitation Both daily and monthly average temperatures are generally well represented by the model. Conversely, daily precipitation results present larger deviations from observational data. However, noticeable accuracy is gained when comparing with monthly precipitation observations. There are some especially conflictive subregions where precipitation is scarcely captured, such as the Southeast of the Iberian Peninsula, mainly due to its extremely convective nature. Regarding parameterization schemes performance, every set provides very

Achieving accurate simulations of urban impacts on ozone at high resolution

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Li, J; Georgescu, M; Mahalov, A; Moustaoui, M; Hyde, P

2014-01-01

The effects of urbanization on ozone levels have been widely investigated over cities primarily located in temperate and/or humid regions. In this study, nested WRF-Chem simulations with a finest grid resolution of 1 km are conducted to investigate ozone concentrations [O 3 ] due to urbanization within cities in arid/semi-arid environments. First, a method based on a shape preserving Monotonic Cubic Interpolation (MCI) is developed and used to downscale anthropogenic emissions from the 4 km resolution 2005 National Emissions Inventory (NEI05) to the finest model resolution of 1 km. Using the rapidly expanding Phoenix metropolitan region as the area of focus, we demonstrate the proposed MCI method achieves ozone simulation results with appreciably improved correspondence to observations relative to the default interpolation method of the WRF-Chem system. Next, two additional sets of experiments are conducted, with the recommended MCI approach, to examine impacts of urbanization on ozone production: (1) the urban land cover is included (i.e., urbanization experiments) and, (2) the urban land cover is replaced with the region’s native shrubland. Impacts due to the presence of the built environment on [O 3 ] are highly heterogeneous across the metropolitan area. Increased near surface [O 3 ] due to urbanization of 10–20 ppb is predominantly a nighttime phenomenon while simulated impacts during daytime are negligible. Urbanization narrows the daily [O 3 ] range (by virtue of increasing nighttime minima), an impact largely due to the region’s urban heat island. Our results demonstrate the importance of the MCI method for accurate representation of the diurnal profile of ozone, and highlight its utility for high-resolution air quality simulations for urban areas. (letter)

Evaluation of the regional climate response in Australia to large-scale climate modes in the historical NARCliM simulations

Science.gov (United States)

Fita, L.; Evans, J. P.; Argüeso, D.; King, A.; Liu, Y.

2017-10-01

NARCliM (New South Wales (NSW)/Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Regional Climate Modelling project) is a regional climate modeling project for the Australian area. It is providing a comprehensive dynamically downscaled climate dataset for the CORDEX-AustralAsia region at 50-km resolution, and south-East Australia at a resolution of 10 km. The first phase of NARCliM produced 60-year long reanalysis driven regional simulations to allow evaluation of the regional model performance. This long control period (1950-2009) was used so that the model ability to capture the impact of large scale climate modes on Australian climate could be examined. Simulations are evaluated using a gridded observational dataset. Results show that using model independence as a criteria for choosing atmospheric model configuration from different possible sets of parameterizations may contribute to the regional climate models having different overall biases. The regional models generally capture the regional climate response to large-scale modes better than the driving reanalysis, though no regional model improves on all aspects of the simulated climate.

MODELING AND SIMULATION OF HIGH RESOLUTION OPTICAL REMOTE SENSING SATELLITE GEOMETRIC CHAIN

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Z. Xia

2018-04-01

Full Text Available The high resolution satellite with the longer focal length and the larger aperture has been widely used in georeferencing of the observed scene in recent years. The consistent end to end model of high resolution remote sensing satellite geometric chain is presented, which consists of the scene, the three line array camera, the platform including attitude and position information, the time system and the processing algorithm. The integrated design of the camera and the star tracker is considered and the simulation method of the geolocation accuracy is put forward by introduce the new index of the angle between the camera and the star tracker. The model is validated by the geolocation accuracy simulation according to the test method of the ZY-3 satellite imagery rigorously. The simulation results show that the geolocation accuracy is within 25m, which is highly consistent with the test results. The geolocation accuracy can be improved about 7 m by the integrated design. The model combined with the simulation method is applicable to the geolocation accuracy estimate before the satellite launching.

Global high resolution versus Limited Area Model climate change projections over Europe

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Déqué, Michel; Jones, R. G.; Wild, M.

2005-01-01

the 2071-2100 and the 1961-1990 means is compared with the same diagnostic obtained with nine Regional Climate Models (RCM) all driven by the Hadley Centre atmospheric GCM. The seasonal mean response for 2m temperature and precipitation is investigated. For temperature, GCMs and RCMs behave similarly......, except that GCMs exhibit a larger spread. However, during summer, the spread of the RCMs - in particular in terms of precipitation - is larger than that of the GCMs. This indicates that the European summer climate is strongly controlled by parameterized physics and/or high-resolution processes...... errors are more spread. In addition, GCM precipitation response is slightly but significantly different from that of the RCMs....

WRF high resolution dynamical downscaling of ERA-Interim for Portugal

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Soares, Pedro M.M. [University of Lisbon, Instituto Dom Luiz, Lisbon (Portugal); Faculdade de Ciencias da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon (Portugal); Cardoso, Rita M.; Miranda, Pedro M.A.; Medeiros, Joana de [University of Lisbon, Instituto Dom Luiz, Lisbon (Portugal); Belo-Pereira, Margarida; Espirito-Santo, Fatima [Instituto de Meteorologia, Lisbon (Portugal)

2012-11-15

This study proposes a dynamically downscaled climatology of Portugal, produced by a high resolution (9 km) WRF simulation, forced by 20 years of ERA-Interim reanalysis (1989-2008), nested in an intermediate domain with 27 km of resolution. The Portuguese mainland is characterized by large precipitation gradients, with observed mean annual precipitation ranging from about 400 to over 2,200 mm, with a very wet northwest and rather dry southeast, largely explained by orographic processes. Model results are compared with all available stations with continuous records, comprising daily information in 32 stations for temperature and 308 for precipitation, through the computation of mean climatologies, standard statistical errors on daily to seasonally timescales, and distributions of extreme events. Results show that WRF at 9 km outperforms ERA-Interim in all analyzed variables, with good results in the representation of the annual cycles in each region. The biases of minimum and maximum temperature are reduced, with improvement of the description of temperature variability at the extreme range of its distribution. The largest gain of the high resolution simulations is visible in the rainiest regions of Portugal, where orographic enhancement is crucial. These improvements are striking in the high ranking percentiles in all seasons, describing extreme precipitation events. WRF results at 9 km compare favorably with published results supporting its use as a high-resolution regional climate model. This higher resolution allows a better representation of extreme events that are of major importance to develop mitigation/adaptation strategies by policy makers and downstream users of regional climate models in applications such as flash floods or heat waves. (orig.)

Evaluating hourly rainfall characteristics over the U.S. Great Plains in dynamically downscaled climate model simulations using NASA-Unified WRF

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Huikyo; Waliser, Duane E.; Ferraro, Robert; Iguchi, Takamichi; Peters-Lidard, Christa D.; Tian, Baijun; Loikith, Paul C.; Wright, Daniel B.

2017-07-01

Accurate simulation of extreme precipitation events remains a challenge in climate models. This study utilizes hourly precipitation data from ground stations and satellite instruments to evaluate rainfall characteristics simulated by the NASA-Unified Weather Research and Forecasting (NU-WRF) regional climate model at horizontal resolutions of 4, 12, and 24 km over the Great Plains of the United States. We also examined the sensitivity of the simulated precipitation to different spectral nudging approaches and the cumulus parameterizations. The rainfall characteristics in the observations and simulations were defined as an hourly diurnal cycle of precipitation and a joint probability distribution function (JPDF) between duration and peak intensity of precipitation events over the Great Plains in summer. We calculated a JPDF for each data set and the overlapping area between observed and simulated JPDFs to measure the similarity between the two JPDFs. Comparison of the diurnal precipitation cycles between observations and simulations does not reveal the added value of high-resolution simulations. However, the performance of NU-WRF simulations measured by the JPDF metric strongly depends on horizontal resolution. The simulation with the highest resolution of 4 km shows the best agreement with the observations in simulating duration and intensity of wet spells. Spectral nudging does not affect the JPDF significantly. The effect of cumulus parameterizations on the JPDFs is considerable but smaller than that of horizontal resolution. The simulations with lower resolutions of 12 and 24 km show reasonable agreement but only with the high-resolution observational data that are aggregated into coarse resolution and spatially averaged.

Evaluation of a High-Resolution Regional Reanalysis for Europe

Science.gov (United States)

Ohlwein, C.; Wahl, S.; Keller, J. D.; Bollmeyer, C.

2014-12-01

Reanalyses gain more and more importance as a source of meteorological information for many purposes and applications. Several global reanalyses projects (e.g., ERA, MERRA, CSFR, JMA9) produce and verify these data sets to provide time series as long as possible combined with a high data quality. Due to a spatial resolution down to 50-70km and 3-hourly temporal output, they are not suitable for small scale problems (e.g., regional climate assessment, meso-scale NWP verification, input for subsequent models such as river runoff simulations). The implementation of regional reanalyses based on a limited area model along with a data assimilation scheme is able to generate reanalysis data sets with high spatio-temporal resolution. Within the Hans-Ertel-Centre for Weather Research (HErZ), the climate monitoring branch concentrates efforts on the assessment and analysis of regional climate in Germany and Europe. In joint cooperation with DWD (German Meteorological Service), a high-resolution reanalysis system based on the COSMO model has been developed. The regional reanalysis for Europe matches the domain of the CORDEX EURO-11 specifications, albeit at a higher spatial resolution, i.e., 0.055° (6km) instead of 0.11° (12km) and comprises the assimilation of observational data using the existing nudging scheme of COSMO complemented by a special soil moisture analysis with boundary conditions provided by ERA-Interim data. The reanalysis data set covers 6 years (2007-2012) and is currently extended to 16 years. Extensive evaluation of the reanalysis is performed using independent observations with special emphasis on precipitation and high-impact weather situations indicating a better representation of small scale variability. Further, the evaluation shows an added value of the regional reanalysis with respect to the forcing ERA Interim reanalysis and compared to a pure high-resolution dynamical downscaling approach without data assimilation.

High-resolution projections of surface water availability for Tasmania, Australia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

J. C. Bennett

2012-05-01

Full Text Available Changes to streamflows caused by climate change may have major impacts on the management of water for hydro-electricity generation and agriculture in Tasmania, Australia. We describe changes to Tasmanian surface water availability from 1961–1990 to 2070–2099 using high-resolution simulations. Six fine-scale (∼10 km² simulations of daily rainfall and potential evapotranspiration are generated with the CSIRO Conformal Cubic Atmospheric Model (CCAM, a variable-resolution regional climate model (RCM. These variables are bias-corrected with quantile mapping and used as direct inputs to the hydrological models AWBM, IHACRES, Sacramento, SIMHYD and SMAR-G to project streamflows.

The performance of the hydrological models is assessed against 86 streamflow gauges across Tasmania. The SIMHYD model is the least biased (median bias = −3% while IHACRES has the largest bias (median bias = −22%. We find the hydrological models that best simulate observed streamflows produce similar streamflow projections.

There is much greater variation in projections between RCM simulations than between hydrological models. Marked decreases of up to 30% are projected for annual runoff in central Tasmania, while runoff is generally projected to increase in the east. Daily streamflow variability is projected to increase for most of Tasmania, consistent with increases in rainfall intensity. Inter-annual variability of streamflows is projected to increase across most of Tasmania.

This is the first major Australian study to use high-resolution bias-corrected rainfall and potential evapotranspiration projections as direct inputs to hydrological models. Our study shows that these simulations are capable of producing realistic streamflows, allowing for increased confidence in assessing future changes to surface water variability.

High-resolution WRF-LES simulations for real episodes: A case study for prealpine terrain

Science.gov (United States)

Hald, Cornelius; Mauder, Matthias; Laux, Patrick; Kunstmann, Harald

2017-04-01

While in most large or regional scale weather and climate models turbulence is parametrized, LES (Large Eddy Simulation) allows for the explicit modeling of turbulent structures in the atmosphere. With the exponential growth in available computing power the technique has become more and more applicable, yet it has mostly been used to model idealized scenarios. It is investigated how well WRF-LES can represent small scale weather patterns. The results are evaluated against different hydrometeorological measurements. We use WRF-LES to model the diurnal cycle for a 48 hour episode in summer over moderately complex terrain in southern Germany. The model setup uses a high resolution digital elevation model, land use and vegetation map. The atmospheric boundary conditions are set by reanalysis data. Schemes for radiation and microphysics and a land-surface model are employed. The biggest challenge in modeling arises from the high horizontal resolution of dx = 30m, since the subgrid-scale model then requires a vertical resolution dz ≈ 10m for optimal results. We observe model instabilities and present solutions like smoothing of the surface input data, careful positioning of the model domain and shortening of the model time step down to a twentieth of a second. Model results are compared to an array of various instruments including eddy covariance stations, LIDAR, RASS, SODAR, weather stations and unmanned aerial vehicles. All instruments are part of the TERENO pre-Alpine area and were employed in the orchestrated measurement campaign ScaleX in July 2015. Examination of the results show reasonable agreement between model and measurements in temperature- and moisture profiles. Modeled wind profiles are highly dependent on the vertical resolution and are in accordance with measurements only at higher wind speeds. A direct comparison of turbulence is made difficult by the purely statistical character of turbulent motions in the model.

A Non-hydrostatic Atmospheric Model for Global High-resolution Simulation

Science.gov (United States)

Peng, X.; Li, X.

2017-12-01

A three-dimensional non-hydrostatic atmosphere model, GRAPES_YY, is developed on the spherical Yin-Yang grid system in order to enforce global high-resolution weather simulation or forecasting at the CAMS/CMA. The quasi-uniform grid makes the computation be of high efficiency and free of pole problem. Full representation of the three-dimensional Coriolis force is considered in the governing equations. Under the constraint of third-order boundary interpolation, the model is integrated with the semi-implicit semi-Lagrangian method using the same code on both zones. A static halo region is set to ensure computation of cross-boundary transport and updating Dirichlet-type boundary conditions in the solution process of elliptical equations with the Schwarz method. A series of dynamical test cases, including the solid-body advection, the balanced geostrophic flow, zonal flow over an isolated mountain, development of the Rossby-Haurwitz wave and a baroclinic wave, are carried out, and excellent computational stability and accuracy of the dynamic core has been confirmed. After implementation of the physical processes of long and short-wave radiation, cumulus convection, micro-physical transformation of water substances and the turbulent processes in the planetary boundary layer include surface layer vertical fluxes parameterization, a long-term run of the model is then put forward under an idealized aqua-planet configuration to test the model physics and model ability in both short-term and long-term integrations. In the aqua-planet experiment, the model shows an Earth-like structure of circulation. The time-zonal mean temperature, wind components and humidity illustrate reasonable subtropical zonal westerly jet, meridional three-cell circulation, tropical convection and thermodynamic structures. The specific SST and solar insolation being symmetric about the equator enhance the ITCZ and tropical precipitation, which concentrated in tropical region. Additional analysis and

Influence of spatial resolution on precipitation simulations for the central Andes Mountains

Science.gov (United States)

Trachte, Katja; Bendix, Jörg

2013-04-01

The climate of South America is highly influenced by the north-south oriented Andes Mountains. Their complex structure causes modifications of large-scale atmospheric circulations resulting in various mesoscale phenomena as well as a high variability in the local conditions. Due to their height and length the terrain generates distinctly climate conditions between the western and the eastern slopes. While in the tropical regions along the western flanks the conditions are cold and arid, the eastern slopes are dominated by warm-moist and rainy air coming from the Amazon basin. Below 35° S the situation reverses with rather semiarid conditions in the eastern part and temperate rainy climate along southern Chile. Generally, global circulation models (GCMs) describe the state of the global climate and its changes, but are disabled to capture regional or even local features due to their coarse resolution. This is particularly true in heterogeneous regions such as the Andes Mountains, where local driving features, e. g. local circulation systems, highly varies on small scales and thus, lead to a high variability of rainfall distributions. An appropriate technique to overcome this problem and to gain regional and local scale rainfall information is the dynamical downscaling of the global data using a regional climate model (RCM). The poster presents results of the evaluation of the performance of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model over South America with special focus on the central Andes Mountains of Ecuador. A sensitivity study regarding the cumulus parametrization, microphysics, boundary layer processes and the radiation budget is conducted. With 17 simulations consisting of 16 parametrization scheme combinations and 1 default run a suitable model set-up for climate research in this region is supposed to be evaluated. The simulations were conducted in a two-way nested mode i) to examine the best physics scheme combination for the target and ii) to

High resolution present climate and surface mass balance (SMB) of Svalbard modelled by MAR and implementation of a new online SMB downscaling method

Science.gov (United States)

Lang, C.; Fettweis, X.; Kittel, C.; Erpicum, M.

2017-12-01

We present the results of high resolution simulations of the climate and SMB of Svalbard with the regional climate model MAR forced by ERA-40 then ERA-Interim, as well as an online downscaling method allowing us to model the SMB and its components at a resolution twice as high (2.5 vs 5 km here) using only about 25% more CPU time. Spitsbergen, the largest island in Svalbard, has a very hilly topography and a high spatial resolution is needed to correctly represent the local topography and the complex pattern of ice distribution and precipitation. However, high resolution runs with an RCM fully coupled to an energy balance module like MAR require a huge amount of computation time. The hydrostatic equilibrium hypothesis used in MAR also becomes less valid as the spatial resolution increases. We therefore developed in MAR a method to run the snow module at a resolution twice as high as the atmospheric module. Near-surface temperature and humidity are corrected on a grid with a resolution twice as high, as a function of their local gradients and the elevation difference between the corresponding pixels in the 2 grids. We compared the results of our runs at 5 km and with SMB downscaled at 2.5 km over 1960 — 2016 and compared those to previous 10 km runs. On Austfonna, where the slopes are gentle, the agreement between observations and the 5 km SMB is better than with the 10 km SMB. It is again improved at 2.5 km but the gain is relatively small, showing the interest of our method rather than running a time consuming classic 2.5 km resolution simulation. On Spitsbergen, we show that a spatial resolution of 2.5 km is still not enough to represent the complex pattern of topography, precipitation and SMB. Due to a change in the summer atmospheric circulation, from a westerly flow over Svalbard to a northwesterly flow bringing colder air, the SMB of Svalbard was stable between 2006 and 2012, while several melt records were broken in Greenland, due to conditions more

Simulation study for high resolution alpha particle spectrometry with mesh type collimator

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Park, Seunghoon; Kwak, Sungwoo; Kang, Hanbyeol; Shin, Jungki; Park, Iljin

2014-01-01

An alpha particle spectrometry with a mesh type collimator plays a crucial role in identifying specific radionuclide in a radioactive source collected from the atmosphere or environment. The energy resolution is degraded without collimation because particles with a high angle have a longer path to travel in the air. Therefore, collision with the background increases. The collimator can cut out particles which traveling at a high angle. As a result, an energy distribution with high resolution can be obtained. Therefore, the mesh type collimator is simulated for high resolution alpha particle spectrometry. In conclusion, the collimator can improve resolution. With collimator, the collimator is a role of cutting out particles with a high angle, so, low energy tail and broadened energy distribution can be reduced. The mesh diameter is found out as an important factor to control resolution and counting efficiency. Therefore, a target particle, for example, 235 U, can be distinguished by a detector with a collimator under a mixture of various nuclides, for example: 232 U, 238 U, and 232 Th

High resolution multi-scalar drought indices for Iberia

Science.gov (United States)

Russo, Ana; Gouveia, Célia; Trigo, Ricardo; Jerez, Sonia

2014-05-01

The Iberian Peninsula has been recurrently affected by drought episodes and by adverse associated effects (Gouveia et al., 2009), ranging from severe water shortages to losses of hydroelectricity production, increasing risk of forest fires, forest decline and triggering processes of land degradation and desertification. Moreover, Iberia corresponds to one of the most sensitive areas to current and future climate change and is nowadays considered a hot spot of climate change with high probability for the increase of extreme events (Giorgi and Lionello, 2008). The spatial and temporal behavior of climatic droughts at different time scales was analyzed using spatially distributed time series of multi-scalar drought indicators, such as the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) (Vicente-Serrano et al., 2010). This new climatic drought index is based on the simultaneous use of precipitation and temperature fields with the advantage of combining a multi-scalar character with the capacity to include the effects of temperature variability on drought assessment. Moreover, reanalysis data and the higher resolution hindcasted databases obtained from them are valuable surrogates of the sparse observations and widely used for in-depth characterizations of the present-day climate. Accordingly, this work aims to enhance the knowledge on high resolution drought patterns in Iberian Peninsula, taking advantage of high-resolution (10km) regional MM5 simulations of the recent past (1959-2007) over Iberia. It should be stressed that these high resolution meteorological fields (e.g. temperature, precipitation) have been validated for various purposes (Jerez et al., 2013). A detailed characterization of droughts since the 1960s using the 10 km resolution hidncasted simulation was performed with the aim to explore the conditions favoring drought onset, duration and ending, as well as the subsequent short, medium and long-term impacts affecting the environment and the

The fusion of satellite and UAV data: simulation of high spatial resolution band

Science.gov (United States)

Jenerowicz, Agnieszka; Siok, Katarzyna; Woroszkiewicz, Malgorzata; Orych, Agata

2017-10-01

Remote sensing techniques used in the precision agriculture and farming that apply imagery data obtained with sensors mounted on UAV platforms became more popular in the last few years due to the availability of low- cost UAV platforms and low- cost sensors. Data obtained from low altitudes with low- cost sensors can be characterised by high spatial and radiometric resolution but quite low spectral resolution, therefore the application of imagery data obtained with such technology is quite limited and can be used only for the basic land cover classification. To enrich the spectral resolution of imagery data acquired with low- cost sensors from low altitudes, the authors proposed the fusion of RGB data obtained with UAV platform with multispectral satellite imagery. The fusion is based on the pansharpening process, that aims to integrate the spatial details of the high-resolution panchromatic image with the spectral information of lower resolution multispectral or hyperspectral imagery to obtain multispectral or hyperspectral images with high spatial resolution. The key of pansharpening is to properly estimate the missing spatial details of multispectral images while preserving their spectral properties. In the research, the authors presented the fusion of RGB images (with high spatial resolution) obtained with sensors mounted on low- cost UAV platforms and multispectral satellite imagery with satellite sensors, i.e. Landsat 8 OLI. To perform the fusion of UAV data with satellite imagery, the simulation of the panchromatic bands from RGB data based on the spectral channels linear combination, was conducted. Next, for simulated bands and multispectral satellite images, the Gram-Schmidt pansharpening method was applied. As a result of the fusion, the authors obtained several multispectral images with very high spatial resolution and then analysed the spatial and spectral accuracies of processed images.

Modelling the climate of the last millennium: what causes the differences between simulations?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Goosse, H.; Crowley, T.J.; Zorita, E.; Ammann, C.M.; Renssen, H.; Driesschaert, E.

2005-01-01

An ensemble of simulations performed with a coarse resolution 3-D climate model driven by various combinations of external forcing is used to investigate possible causes for differences noticed in two recent simulations of the climate of the past millennium using General Circulation Models (GCMs).

Aerosol midlatitude cyclone indirect effects in observations and high-resolution simulations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

D. T. McCoy

2018-04-01

Full Text Available Aerosol–cloud interactions are a major source of uncertainty in inferring the climate sensitivity from the observational record of temperature. The adjustment of clouds to aerosol is a poorly constrained aspect of these aerosol–cloud interactions. Here, we examine the response of midlatitude cyclone cloud properties to a change in cloud droplet number concentration (CDNC. Idealized experiments in high-resolution, convection-permitting global aquaplanet simulations with constant CDNC are compared to 13 years of remote-sensing observations. Observations and idealized aquaplanet simulations agree that increased warm conveyor belt (WCB moisture flux into cyclones is consistent with higher cyclone liquid water path (CLWP. When CDNC is increased a larger LWP is needed to give the same rain rate. The LWP adjusts to allow the rain rate to be equal to the moisture flux into the cyclone along the WCB. This results in an increased CLWP for higher CDNC at a fixed WCB moisture flux in both observations and simulations. If observed cyclones in the top and bottom tercile of CDNC are contrasted it is found that they have not only higher CLWP but also cloud cover and albedo. The difference in cyclone albedo between the cyclones in the top and bottom third of CDNC is observed by CERES to be between 0.018 and 0.032, which is consistent with a 4.6–8.3 Wm−2 in-cyclone enhancement in upwelling shortwave when scaled by annual-mean insolation. Based on a regression model to observed cyclone properties, roughly 60 % of the observed variability in CLWP can be explained by CDNC and WCB moisture flux.

Downscaling a global climate model to simulate climate change over the US and the implication on regional and urban air quality

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. Trail

2013-09-01

Full Text Available Climate change can exacerbate future regional air pollution events by making conditions more favorable to form high levels of ozone. In this study, we use spectral nudging with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF model to downscale NASA earth system GISS modelE2 results during the years 2006 to 2010 and 2048 to 2052 over the contiguous United States in order to compare the resulting meteorological fields from the air quality perspective during the four seasons of five-year historic and future climatological periods. GISS results are used as initial and boundary conditions by the WRF regional climate model (RCM to produce hourly meteorological fields. The downscaling technique and choice of physics parameterizations used are evaluated by comparing them with in situ observations. This study investigates changes of similar regional climate conditions down to a 12 km by 12 km resolution, as well as the effect of evolving climate conditions on the air quality at major US cities. The high-resolution simulations produce somewhat different results than the coarse-resolution simulations in some regions. Also, through the analysis of the meteorological variables that most strongly influence air quality, we find consistent changes in regional climate that would enhance ozone levels in four regions of the US during fall (western US, Texas, northeastern, and southeastern US, one region during summer (Texas, and one region where changes potentially would lead to better air quality during spring (Northeast. Changes in regional climate that would enhance ozone levels are increased temperatures and stagnation along with decreased precipitation and ventilation. We also find that daily peak temperatures tend to increase in most major cities in the US, which would increase the risk of health problems associated with heat stress. Future work will address a more comprehensive assessment of emissions and chemistry involved in the formation and removal of air

Downscaling a Global Climate Model to Simulate Climate Change Impacts on U.S. Regional and Urban Air Quality

Science.gov (United States)

Trail, M.; Tsimpidi, A. P.; Liu, P.; Tsigaridis, K.; Hu, Y.; Nenes, A.; Russell, A. G.

2013-01-01

Climate change can exacerbate future regional air pollution events by making conditions more favorable to form high levels of ozone. In this study, we use spectral nudging with WRF to downscale NASA earth system GISS modelE2 results during the years 2006 to 2010 and 2048 to 2052 over the continental United States in order to compare the resulting meteorological fields from the air quality perspective during the four seasons of five-year historic and future climatological periods. GISS results are used as initial and boundary conditions by the WRF RCM to produce hourly meteorological fields. The downscaling technique and choice of physics parameterizations used are evaluated by comparing them with in situ observations. This study investigates changes of similar regional climate conditions down to a 12km by 12km resolution, as well as the effect of evolving climate conditions on the air quality at major U.S. cities. The high resolution simulations produce somewhat different results than the coarse resolution simulations in some regions. Also, through the analysis of the meteorological variables that most strongly influence air quality, we find consistent changes in regional climate that would enhance ozone levels in four regions of the U.S. during fall (Western U.S., Texas, Northeastern, and Southeastern U.S), one region during summer (Texas), and one region where changes potentially would lead to better air quality during spring (Northeast). We also find that daily peak temperatures tend to increase in most major cities in the U.S. which would increase the risk of health problems associated with heat stress. Future work will address a more comprehensive assessment of emissions and chemistry involved in the formation and removal of air pollutants.

Visualization and Analysis of Climate Simulation Performance Data

Science.gov (United States)

Röber, Niklas; Adamidis, Panagiotis; Behrens, Jörg

2015-04-01

Visualization is the key process of transforming abstract (scientific) data into a graphical representation, to aid in the understanding of the information hidden within the data. Climate simulation data sets are typically quite large, time varying, and consist of many different variables sampled on an underlying grid. A large variety of climate models - and sub models - exist to simulate various aspects of the climate system. Generally, one is mainly interested in the physical variables produced by the simulation runs, but model developers are also interested in performance data measured along with these simulations. Climate simulation models are carefully developed complex software systems, designed to run in parallel on large HPC systems. An important goal thereby is to utilize the entire hardware as efficiently as possible, that is, to distribute the workload as even as possible among the individual components. This is a very challenging task, and detailed performance data, such as timings, cache misses etc. have to be used to locate and understand performance problems in order to optimize the model implementation. Furthermore, the correlation of performance data to the processes of the application and the sub-domains of the decomposed underlying grid is vital when addressing communication and load imbalance issues. High resolution climate simulations are carried out on tens to hundreds of thousands of cores, thus yielding a vast amount of profiling data, which cannot be analyzed without appropriate visualization techniques. This PICO presentation displays and discusses the ICON simulation model, which is jointly developed by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and the German Weather Service and in partnership with DKRZ. The visualization and analysis of the models performance data allows us to optimize and fine tune the model, as well as to understand its execution on the HPC system. We show and discuss our workflow, as well as present new ideas and

Evaluation of regional climate simulations over the Great Lakes region driven by three global data sets

Science.gov (United States)

Shiyuan Zhong; Xiuping Li; Xindi Bian; Warren E. Heilman; L. Ruby Leung; William I. Jr. Gustafson

2012-01-01

The performance of regional climate simulations is evaluated for the Great Lakes region. Three 10-year (1990-1999) current-climate simulations are performed using the MM5 regional climate model (RCM) with 36-km horizontal resolution. The simulations employed identical configuration and physical parameterizations, but different lateral boundary conditions and sea-...

Operational High Resolution Chemical Kinetics Simulation, Phase I

Data.gov (United States)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration — Numerical simulations of chemical kinetics are critical to addressing urgent issues in both the developed and developing world. Ongoing demand for higher resolution...

A High-resolution Reanalysis for the European CORDEX Region

Science.gov (United States)

Bentzien, Sabrina; Bollmeyer, Christoph; Crewell, Susanne; Friederichs, Petra; Hense, Andreas; Keller, Jan; Keune, Jessica; Kneifel, Stefan; Ohlwein, Christian; Pscheidt, Ieda; Redl, Stephanie; Steinke, Sandra

2014-05-01

A High-resolution Reanalysis for the European CORDEX Region Within the Hans-Ertel-Centre for Weather Research (HErZ), the climate monitoring branch concentrates efforts on the assessment and analysis of regional climate in Germany and Europe. In joint cooperation with DWD (German Meteorological Service), a high-resolution reanalysis system based on the COSMO model has been developed. Reanalyses gain more and more importance as a source of meteorological information for many purposes and applications. Several global reanalyses projects (e.g., ERA, MERRA, CSFR, JMA9) produce and verify these data sets to provide time series as long as possible combined with a high data quality. Due to a spatial resolution down to 50-70km and 3-hourly temporal output, they are not suitable for small scale problems (e.g., regional climate assessment, meso-scale NWP verification, input for subsequent models such as river runoff simulations). The implementation of regional reanalyses based on a limited area model along with a data assimilation scheme is able to generate reanalysis data sets with high spatio-temporal resolution. The work presented here focuses on the regional reanalysis for Europe with a domain matching the CORDEX-EURO-11 specifications, albeit at a higher spatial resolution, i.e., 0.055° (6km) instead of 0.11° (12km). The COSMO reanalysis system comprises the assimilation of observational data using the existing nudging scheme of COSMO and is complemented by a special soil moisture analysis and boundary conditions given by ERA-interim data. The reanalysis data set currently covers 6 years (2007-2012). The evaluation of the reanalyses is done using independent observations with special emphasis on precipitation and high-impact weather situations. The development and evaluation of the COSMO-based reanalysis for the CORDEX-Euro domain can be seen as a preparation for joint European activities on the development of an ensemble system of regional reanalyses for Europe.

Can High-resolution WRF Simulations Be Used for Short-term Forecasting of Lightning?

Science.gov (United States)

Goodman, S. J.; Lapenta, W.; McCaul, E. W., Jr.; LaCasse, K.; Petersen, W.

2006-01-01

A number of research teams have begun to make quasi-operational forecast simulations at high resolution with models such as the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model. These model runs have used horizontal meshes of 2-4 km grid spacing, and thus resolved convective storms explicitly. In the light of recent global satellite-based observational studies that reveal robust relationships between total lightning flash rates and integrated amounts of precipitation-size ice hydrometeors in storms, it is natural to inquire about the capabilities of these convection-resolving models in representing the ice hydrometeor fields faithfully. If they do, this might make operational short-term forecasts of lightning activity feasible. We examine high-resolution WRF simulations from several Southeastern cases for which either NLDN or LMA lightning data were available. All the WRF runs use a standard microphysics package that depicts only three ice species, cloud ice, snow and graupel. The realism of the WRF simulations is examined by comparisons with both lightning and radar observations and with additional even higher-resolution cloud-resolving model runs. Preliminary findings are encouraging in that they suggest that WRF often makes convective storms of the proper size in approximately the right location, but they also indicate that higher resolution and better hydrometeor microphysics would be helpful in improving the realism of the updraft strengths, reflectivity and ice hydrometeor fields.

High-resolution simulations of galaxy formation in a cold dark matter scenario

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kates, R.E.; Klypin, A.A.

1990-01-01

We present the results of our numerical simulations of galaxy clustering in a two-dimensional model. Our simulations allowed better resolution than could be obtained in three-dimensional simulations. We used a spectrum of initial perturbations corresponding to a cold dark matter (CDM) model and followed the history of each particle by modelling the shocking and subsequent cooling of matter. We took into account cooling processes in a hot plasma with primeval cosmic abundances of H and He as well as Compton cooling. (However, the influence of these processes on the trajectories of ordinary matter particles was not simulated in the present code.) As a result of the high resolution, we were able to observe a network of chains on all scales down to the limits of resolution. This network extends out from dense clusters and superclusters and penetrates into voids (with decreasing density). In addition to the dark matter network structure, a definite prediction of our simulations is the existence of a connected filamentary structure consisting of hot gas with a temperature of 10 6 K and extending over 100-150 Mpc. (Throughout this paper, we assume the Hubble constant H 0 =50 km/sec/Mpc.) These structures trace high-density filaments of the dark matter distribution and should be searched for in soft X-ray observations. In contrast to common assumptions, we found that peaks of the linearized density distribution were not reliable tracers of the eventual galaxy distribution. We were also able to demonstrate that the influence of small-scale fluctuations on the structure at larger scales is always small, even at the late nonlinear stage. (orig.)

Effects of lateral boundary condition resolution and update frequency on regional climate model predictions

Science.gov (United States)

Pankatz, Klaus; Kerkweg, Astrid

2015-04-01

The work presented is part of the joint project "DecReg" ("Regional decadal predictability") which is in turn part of the project "MiKlip" ("Decadal predictions"), an effort funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research to improve decadal predictions on a global and regional scale. In MiKlip, one big question is if regional climate modeling shows "added value", i.e. to evaluate, if regional climate models (RCM) produce better results than the driving models. However, the scope of this study is to look more closely at the setup specific details of regional climate modeling. As regional models only simulate a small domain, they have to inherit information about the state of the atmosphere at their lateral boundaries from external data sets. There are many unresolved questions concerning the setup of lateral boundary conditions (LBC). External data sets come from global models or from global reanalysis data-sets. A temporal resolution of six hours is common for this kind of data. This is mainly due to the fact, that storage space is a limiting factor, especially for climate simulations. However, theoretically, the coupling frequency could be as high as the time step of the driving model. Meanwhile, it is unclear if a more frequent update of the LBCs has a significant effect on the climate in the domain of the RCM. The first study examines how the RCM reacts to a higher update frequency. The study is based on a 30 year time slice experiment for three update frequencies of the LBC, namely six hours, one hour and six minutes. The evaluation of means, standard deviations and statistics of the climate in the regional domain shows only small deviations, some statistically significant though, of 2m temperature, sea level pressure and precipitation. The second part of the first study assesses parameters linked to cyclone activity, which is affected by the LBC update frequency. Differences in track density and strength are found when comparing the simulations

Nested High Resolution Modeling of the Impact of Urbanization on Regional Climate in Three Vast Urban Agglomerations in China

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Jun; Feng, Jinming; Yan, Zhongwei; Hu, Yonghong; Jia, Gensuo

2013-04-01

In this paper, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model coupled to the Urban Canopy Model (UCM) is employed to simulate the impact of urbanization on the regional climate over three vast city agglomerations in China. Based on high resolution land use and land cover data, two scenarios are designed to represent the non-urban and current urban land use distributions. By comparing the results of two nested, high resolution numerical experiments, the spatial and temporal changes on surface air temperature, heat stress index, surface energy budget and precipitation due to urbanization are analyzed and quantified. Urban expansion increases the surface air temperature in urban areas by about 1? and this climatic forcing of urbanization on temperature is more pronounced in summer and nighttime than other seasons and daytime. The heat stress intensity, which reflects the combined effects of temperature and humidity, is enhanced by about 0.5 units in urban areas. The regional incoming solar radiation increases after urban expansion, which may be caused by the reduction of cloud fraction. The increased temperature and roughness of the urban surface lead to enhanced convergence. Meanwhile, the planetary boundary layer is deepened and water vapor is mixed more evenly in the lower atmosphere. The deficit of water vapor leads to less convective available potential energy and more convective inhibition energy. Finally, these combined effects may reduce the rainfall amount over urban area mainly in summer and change the regional precipitation pattern to a certain extent.

Nested high-resolution modeling of the impact of urbanization on regional climate in three vast urban agglomerations in China

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Jun; Feng, Jinming; Yan, Zhongwei; Hu, Yonghong; Jia, Gensuo

2012-11-01

In this paper, the Weather Research and Forecasting Model, coupled to the Urban Canopy Model, is employed to simulate the impact of urbanization on the regional climate over three vast city agglomerations in China. Based on high-resolution land use and land cover data, two scenarios are designed to represent the nonurban and current urban land use distributions. By comparing the results of two nested, high-resolution numerical experiments, the spatial and temporal changes on surface air temperature, heat stress index, surface energy budget, and precipitation due to urbanization are analyzed and quantified. Urban expansion increases the surface air temperature in urban areas by about 1°C, and this climatic forcing of urbanization on temperature is more pronounced in summer and nighttime than other seasons and daytime. The heat stress intensity, which reflects the combined effects of temperature and humidity, is enhanced by about 0.5 units in urban areas. The regional incoming solar radiation increases after urban expansion, which may be caused by the reduction of cloud fraction. The increased temperature and roughness of the urban surface lead to enhanced convergence. Meanwhile, the planetary boundary layer is deepened, and water vapor is mixed more evenly in the lower atmosphere. The deficit of water vapor leads to less convective available potential energy and more convective inhibition energy. Finally, these combined effects may reduce the rainfall amount over urban areas, mainly in summer, and change the regional precipitation pattern to a certain extent.

Detection and Attribution of Regional Climate Change

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Bala, G; Mirin, A

2007-01-19

We developed a high resolution global coupled modeling capability to perform breakthrough studies of the regional climate change. The atmospheric component in our simulation uses a 1{sup o} latitude x 1.25{sup o} longitude grid which is the finest resolution ever used for the NCAR coupled climate model CCSM3. Substantial testing and slight retuning was required to get an acceptable control simulation. The major accomplishment is the validation of this new high resolution configuration of CCSM3. There are major improvements in our simulation of the surface wind stress and sea ice thickness distribution in the Arctic. Surface wind stress and ocean circulation in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current are also improved. Our results demonstrate that the FV version of the CCSM coupled model is a state of the art climate model whose simulation capabilities are in the class of those used for IPCC assessments. We have also provided 1000 years of model data to Scripps Institution of Oceanography to estimate the natural variability of stream flow in California. In the future, our global model simulations will provide boundary data to high-resolution mesoscale model that will be used at LLNL. The mesoscale model would dynamically downscale the GCM climate to regional scale on climate time scales.

Impact of model resolution on simulated wind, drifting snow and surface mass balance in Terre Adélie, East Antarctica

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lenaerts, J.T.M.|info:eu-repo/dai/nl/314850163; van den Broeke, M.R.|info:eu-repo/dai/nl/073765643; Scarchilli, C.; Agosta, C.

2012-01-01

This paper presents the impact of model resolution on the simulated wind speed, drifting snow climate and surface mass balance (SMB) of Terre Ad´elie and its surroundings, East Antarctica. We compare regional climate model simulations at 27 and 5.5 km resolution for the year 2009. The wind speed

Downscaled and debiased climate simulations for North America from 21,000 years ago to 2100AD.

Science.gov (United States)

Lorenz, David J; Nieto-Lugilde, Diego; Blois, Jessica L; Fitzpatrick, Matthew C; Williams, John W

2016-07-05

Increasingly, ecological modellers are integrating paleodata with future projections to understand climate-driven biodiversity dynamics from the past through the current century. Climate simulations from earth system models are necessary to this effort, but must be debiased and downscaled before they can be used by ecological models. Downscaling methods and observational baselines vary among researchers, which produces confounding biases among downscaled climate simulations. We present unified datasets of debiased and downscaled climate simulations for North America from 21 ka BP to 2100AD, at 0.5° spatial resolution. Temporal resolution is decadal averages of monthly data until 1950AD, average climates for 1950-2005 AD, and monthly data from 2010 to 2100AD, with decadal averages also provided. This downscaling includes two transient paleoclimatic simulations and 12 climate models for the IPCC AR5 (CMIP5) historical (1850-2005), RCP4.5, and RCP8.5 21st-century scenarios. Climate variables include primary variables and derived bioclimatic variables. These datasets provide a common set of climate simulations suitable for seamlessly modelling the effects of past and future climate change on species distributions and diversity.

Climate change projections over three metropolitan regions in Southeast Brazil using the non-hydrostatic Eta regional climate model at 5-km resolution

Science.gov (United States)

Lyra, Andre; Tavares, Priscila; Chou, Sin Chan; Sueiro, Gustavo; Dereczynski, Claudine; Sondermann, Marcely; Silva, Adan; Marengo, José; Giarolla, Angélica

2018-04-01

The objective of this work is to assess changes in three metropolitan regions of Southeast Brazil (Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Santos) based on the projections produced by the Eta Regional Climate Model (RCM) at very high spatial resolution, 5 km. The region, which is densely populated and extremely active economically, is frequently affected by intense rainfall events that trigger floods and landslides during the austral summer. The analyses are carried out for the period between 1961 and 2100. The 5-km simulations are results from a second downscaling nesting in the HadGEM2-ES RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 simulations. Prior to the assessment of the projections, the higher resolution simulations were evaluated for the historical period (1961-1990). The comparison between the 5-km and the coarser driver model simulations shows that the spatial patterns of precipitation and temperature of the 5-km Eta simulations are in good agreement with the observations. The simulated frequency distribution of the precipitation and temperature extremes from the 5-km Eta RCM is consistent with the observed structure and extreme values. Projections of future climate change using the 5-km Eta runs show stronger warming in the region, primarily during the summer season, while precipitation is strongly reduced. Projected temperature extremes show widespread heating with maximum temperatures increasing by approximately 9 °C in the three metropolitan regions by the end of the century in the RCP8.5 scenario. A trend of drier climate is also projected using indices based on daily precipitation, which reaches annual rainfall reductions of more than 50 % in the state of Rio de Janeiro and between 40 and 45 % in São Paulo and Santos. The magnitude of these changes has negative implications to the population health conditions, energy security, and economy.

The ARM Cloud Radar Simulator for Global Climate Models: Bridging Field Data and Climate Models

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Zhang, Yuying [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California; Xie, Shaocheng [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California; Klein, Stephen A. [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California; Marchand, Roger [University of Washington, Seattle, Washington; Kollias, Pavlos [Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York; Clothiaux, Eugene E. [The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania; Lin, Wuyin [Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York; Johnson, Karen [Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York; Swales, Dustin [CIRES and NOAA/Earth System Research Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado; Bodas-Salcedo, Alejandro [Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, United Kingdom; Tang, Shuaiqi [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California; Haynes, John M. [Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere/Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado; Collis, Scott [Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois; Jensen, Michael [Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York; Bharadwaj, Nitin [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington; Hardin, Joseph [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington; Isom, Bradley [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington

2018-01-01

Clouds play an important role in Earth’s radiation budget and hydrological cycle. However, current global climate models (GCMs) have had difficulties in accurately simulating clouds and precipitation. To improve the representation of clouds in climate models, it is crucial to identify where simulated clouds differ from real world observations of them. This can be difficult, since significant differences exist between how a climate model represents clouds and what instruments observe, both in terms of spatial scale and the properties of the hydrometeors which are either modeled or observed. To address these issues and minimize impacts of instrument limitations, the concept of instrument “simulators”, which convert model variables into pseudo-instrument observations, has evolved with the goal to improve and to facilitate the comparison of modeled clouds with observations. Many simulators have (and continue to be developed) for a variety of instruments and purposes. A community satellite simulator package, the Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project (CFMIP) Observation Simulator Package (COSP; Bodas-Salcedo et al. 2011), contains several independent satellite simulators and is being widely used in the global climate modeling community to exploit satellite observations for model cloud evaluation (e.g., Klein et al. 2013; Zhang et al. 2010). This article introduces a ground-based cloud radar simulator developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program for comparing climate model clouds with ARM observations from its vertically pointing 35-GHz radars. As compared to CloudSat radar observations, ARM radar measurements occur with higher temporal resolution and finer vertical resolution. This enables users to investigate more fully the detailed vertical structures within clouds, resolve thin clouds, and quantify the diurnal variability of clouds. Particularly, ARM radars are sensitive to low-level clouds, which are

Shift of biome patterns due to simulated climate variability and climate change

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Claussen, M.

1993-01-01

The variability of simulated equilibrium-response patterns of biomes caused by simulated climate variability and climate shift is analysed. This investigation is based on various realisations of simulated present-day climate and climate shift. It has been found that the difference between biomes computed from three 10-year climatologies and from the corresponding 30-year climatology, simulated by the Hamburg climate model at T21 resolution, amounts to approximately 6% of the total land area, Antarctica excluded. This difference is mainly due to differences in annual moisture availability and winter temperatures. When intercomparing biomes from the 10-year climatologies a 10% difference is seen, but there is no unique difference pattern. In contrast to the interdecadal variability, the shift of conditions favorable for biomes due to a shift in climate in the next 100 years, caused by an increase in sea-surface temperatures and atmospheric CO 2 , reveals a unique trend pattern. It turns out that the strongest and most significant signal is the north-east shift of conditions for boreal biomes. This signal is caused by an increase of annual temperature sums as well as mean temperatures of the coldest and warmest months. Trends in annual moisture availability are of secondary importance globally. Regionally, a decrease in water availability affects biomes in Central and East Europe and an increase of water availability leads to a potential increase in tropical rain forest. In total, all differences amount to roughly 30% of the total land surface, Antarctica excluded. (orig./KW)

Simulation of high-resolution X-ray microscopic images for improved alignment

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Song Xiangxia; Zhang Xiaobo; Liu Gang; Cheng Xianchao; Li Wenjie; Guan Yong; Liu Ying; Xiong Ying; Tian Yangchao

2011-01-01

The introduction of precision optical elements to X-ray microscopes necessitates fine realignment to achieve optimal high-resolution imaging. In this paper, we demonstrate a numerical method for simulating image formation that facilitates alignment of the source, condenser, objective lens, and CCD camera. This algorithm, based on ray-tracing and Rayleigh-Sommerfeld diffraction theory, is applied to simulate the X-ray microscope beamline U7A of National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (NSRL). The simulations and imaging experiments show that the algorithm is useful for guiding experimental adjustments. Our alignment simulation method is an essential tool for the transmission X-ray microscope (TXM) with optical elements and may also be useful for the alignment of optical components in other modes of microscopy.

Final Progress Report submitted via the DOE Energy Link (E-Link) in June 2009 [Collaborative Research: Decadal-to-Centennial Climate & Climate Change Studies with Enhanced Variable and Uniform Resolution GCMs Using Advanced Numerical Techniques

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Fox-Rabinovitz, Michael S. [Univ. of Quebec (Canada); Cote, Jean [Univ. of Quebec (Canada)

2009-10-09

The joint U.S-Canadian project has been devoted to: (a) decadal climate studies using developed state-of-the-art GCMs (General Circulation Models) with enhanced variable and uniform resolution; (b) development and implementation of advanced numerical techniques; (c) research in parallel computing and associated numerical methods; (d) atmospheric chemistry experiments related to climate issues; (e) validation of regional climate modeling strategies for nested- and stretched-grid models. The variable-resolution stretched-grid (SG) GCMs produce accurate and cost-efficient regional climate simulations with mesoscale resolution. The advantage of the stretched grid approach is that it allows us to preserve the high quality of both global and regional circulations while providing consistent interactions between global and regional scales and phenomena. The major accomplishment for the project has been the successful international SGMIP-1 and SGMIP-2 (Stretched-Grid Model Intercomparison Project, phase-1 and phase-2) based on this research developments and activities. The SGMIP provides unique high-resolution regional and global multi-model ensembles beneficial for regional climate modeling and broader modeling community. The U.S SGMIP simulations have been produced using SciDAC ORNL supercomputers. The results of the successful SGMIP multi-model ensemble simulations of the U.S. climate are available at the SGMIP web site (http://essic.umd.edu/~foxrab/sgmip.html) and through the link to the WMO/WCRP/WGNE web site: http://collaboration.cmc.ec.gc.ca/science/wgne. Collaborations with other international participants M. Deque (Meteo-France) and J. McGregor (CSIRO, Australia) and their centers and groups have been beneficial for the strong joint effort, especially for the SGMIP activities. The WMO/WCRP/WGNE endorsed the SGMIP activities in 2004-2008. This project reflects a trend in the modeling and broader communities to move towards regional and sub-regional assessments and

Prototyping global Earth System Models at high resolution: Representation of climate, ecosystems, and acidification in Eastern Boundary Currents

Science.gov (United States)

Dunne, J. P.; John, J. G.; Stock, C. A.

2013-12-01

The world's major Eastern Boundary Currents (EBC) such as the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem (CCLME) are critically important areas for global fisheries. Computational limitations have divided past EBC modeling into two types: high resolution regional approaches that resolve the strong meso-scale structures involved, and coarse global approaches that represent the large scale context for EBCs, but only crudely resolve only the largest scales of their manifestation. These latter global studies have illustrated the complex mechanisms involved in the climate change and acidification response in these regions, with the CCLME response dominated not by local adjustments but large scale reorganization of ocean circulation through remote forcing of water-mass supply pathways. While qualitatively illustrating the limitations of regional high resolution studies in long term projection, these studies lack the ability to robustly quantify change because of the inability of these models to represent the baseline meso-scale structures of EBCs. In the present work, we compare current generation coarse resolution (one degree) and a prototype next generation high resolution (1/10 degree) Earth System Models (ESMs) from NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in representing the four major EBCs. We review the long-known temperature biases that the coarse models suffer in being unable to represent the timing and intensity of upwelling-favorable winds, along with lack of representation of the observed high chlorophyll and biological productivity resulting from this upwelling. In promising contrast, we show that the high resolution prototype is capable of representing not only the overall meso-scale structure in physical and biogeochemical fields, but also the appropriate offshore extent of temperature anomalies and other EBC characteristics. Results for chlorophyll were mixed; while high resolution chlorophyll in EBCs were strongly enhanced over the coarse resolution

Using high-resolution future climate scenarios to forecast Bromus tectorum invasion in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Science.gov (United States)

West, Amanda M; Kumar, Sunil; Wakie, Tewodros; Brown, Cynthia S; Stohlgren, Thomas J; Laituri, Melinda; Bromberg, Jim

2015-01-01

National Parks are hallmarks of ecosystem preservation in the United States. The introduction of alien invasive plant species threatens protection of these areas. Bromus tectorum L. (commonly called downy brome or cheatgrass), which is found in Rocky Mountain National Park (hereafter, the Park), Colorado, USA, has been implicated in early spring competition with native grasses, decreased soil nitrogen, altered nutrient and hydrologic regimes, and increased fire intensity. We estimated the potential distribution of B. tectorum in the Park based on occurrence records (n = 211), current and future climate, and distance to roads and trails. An ensemble of six future climate scenarios indicated the habitable area of B. tectorum may increase from approximately 5.5% currently to 20.4% of the Park by the year 2050. Using ordination methods we evaluated the climatic space occupied by B. tectorum in the Park and how this space may shift given future climate change. Modeling climate change at a small extent (1,076 km2) and at a fine spatial resolution (90 m) is a novel approach in species distribution modeling, and may provide inference for microclimates not captured in coarse-scale models. Maps from our models serve as high-resolution hypotheses that can be improved over time by land managers to set priorities for surveys and removal of invasive species such as B. tectorum.

Using High-Resolution Future Climate Scenarios to Forecast Bromus tectorum Invasion in Rocky Mountain National Park

Science.gov (United States)

West, Amanda M.; Kumar, Sunil; Wakie, Tewodros; Brown, Cynthia S.; Stohlgren, Thomas J.; Laituri, Melinda; Bromberg, Jim

2015-01-01

National Parks are hallmarks of ecosystem preservation in the United States. The introduction of alien invasive plant species threatens protection of these areas. Bromus tectorum L. (commonly called downy brome or cheatgrass), which is found in Rocky Mountain National Park (hereafter, the Park), Colorado, USA, has been implicated in early spring competition with native grasses, decreased soil nitrogen, altered nutrient and hydrologic regimes, and increased fire intensity. We estimated the potential distribution of B. tectorum in the Park based on occurrence records (n = 211), current and future climate, and distance to roads and trails. An ensemble of six future climate scenarios indicated the habitable area of B. tectorum may increase from approximately 5.5% currently to 20.4% of the Park by the year 2050. Using ordination methods we evaluated the climatic space occupied by B. tectorum in the Park and how this space may shift given future climate change. Modeling climate change at a small extent (1,076 km2) and at a fine spatial resolution (90 m) is a novel approach in species distribution modeling, and may provide inference for microclimates not captured in coarse-scale models. Maps from our models serve as high-resolution hypotheses that can be improved over time by land managers to set priorities for surveys and removal of invasive species such as B. tectorum. PMID:25695255

Using high-resolution future climate scenarios to forecast Bromus tectorum invasion in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Amanda M West

Full Text Available National Parks are hallmarks of ecosystem preservation in the United States. The introduction of alien invasive plant species threatens protection of these areas. Bromus tectorum L. (commonly called downy brome or cheatgrass, which is found in Rocky Mountain National Park (hereafter, the Park, Colorado, USA, has been implicated in early spring competition with native grasses, decreased soil nitrogen, altered nutrient and hydrologic regimes, and increased fire intensity. We estimated the potential distribution of B. tectorum in the Park based on occurrence records (n = 211, current and future climate, and distance to roads and trails. An ensemble of six future climate scenarios indicated the habitable area of B. tectorum may increase from approximately 5.5% currently to 20.4% of the Park by the year 2050. Using ordination methods we evaluated the climatic space occupied by B. tectorum in the Park and how this space may shift given future climate change. Modeling climate change at a small extent (1,076 km2 and at a fine spatial resolution (90 m is a novel approach in species distribution modeling, and may provide inference for microclimates not captured in coarse-scale models. Maps from our models serve as high-resolution hypotheses that can be improved over time by land managers to set priorities for surveys and removal of invasive species such as B. tectorum.

Scale dependency of regional climate modeling of current and future climate extremes in Germany

Science.gov (United States)

Tölle, Merja H.; Schefczyk, Lukas; Gutjahr, Oliver

2017-11-01

A warmer climate is projected for mid-Europe, with less precipitation in summer, but with intensified extremes of precipitation and near-surface temperature. However, the extent and magnitude of such changes are associated with creditable uncertainty because of the limitations of model resolution and parameterizations. Here, we present the results of convection-permitting regional climate model simulations for Germany integrated with the COSMO-CLM using a horizontal grid spacing of 1.3 km, and additional 4.5- and 7-km simulations with convection parameterized. Of particular interest is how the temperature and precipitation fields and their extremes depend on the horizontal resolution for current and future climate conditions. The spatial variability of precipitation increases with resolution because of more realistic orography and physical parameterizations, but values are overestimated in summer and over mountain ridges in all simulations compared to observations. The spatial variability of temperature is improved at a resolution of 1.3 km, but the results are cold-biased, especially in summer. The increase in resolution from 7/4.5 km to 1.3 km is accompanied by less future warming in summer by 1 ∘C. Modeled future precipitation extremes will be more severe, and temperature extremes will not exclusively increase with higher resolution. Although the differences between the resolutions considered (7/4.5 km and 1.3 km) are small, we find that the differences in the changes in extremes are large. High-resolution simulations require further studies, with effective parameterizations and tunings for different topographic regions. Impact models and assessment studies may benefit from such high-resolution model results, but should account for the impact of model resolution on model processes and climate change.

Impact of Spatial Soil and Climate Input Data Aggregation on Regional Yield Simulations

Science.gov (United States)

Hoffmann, Holger; Zhao, Gang; Asseng, Senthold; Bindi, Marco; Biernath, Christian; Constantin, Julie; Coucheney, Elsa; Dechow, Rene; Doro, Luca; Eckersten, Henrik; Gaiser, Thomas; Grosz, Balázs; Heinlein, Florian; Kassie, Belay T.; Kersebaum, Kurt-Christian; Klein, Christian; Kuhnert, Matthias; Lewan, Elisabet; Moriondo, Marco; Nendel, Claas; Priesack, Eckart; Raynal, Helene; Roggero, Pier P.; Rötter, Reimund P.; Siebert, Stefan; Specka, Xenia; Tao, Fulu; Teixeira, Edmar; Trombi, Giacomo; Wallach, Daniel; Weihermüller, Lutz; Yeluripati, Jagadeesh; Ewert, Frank

2016-01-01

We show the error in water-limited yields simulated by crop models which is associated with spatially aggregated soil and climate input data. Crop simulations at large scales (regional, national, continental) frequently use input data of low resolution. Therefore, climate and soil data are often generated via averaging and sampling by area majority. This may bias simulated yields at large scales, varying largely across models. Thus, we evaluated the error associated with spatially aggregated soil and climate data for 14 crop models. Yields of winter wheat and silage maize were simulated under water-limited production conditions. We calculated this error from crop yields simulated at spatial resolutions from 1 to 100 km for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Most models showed yields biased by data. The relative mean absolute error (rMAE) of most models using aggregated soil data was in the range or larger than the inter-annual or inter-model variability in yields. This error increased further when both climate and soil data were aggregated. Distinct error patterns indicate that the rMAE may be estimated from few soil variables. Illustrating the range of these aggregation effects across models, this study is a first step towards an ex-ante assessment of aggregation errors in large-scale simulations. PMID:27055028

Local-scale high-resolution atmospheric dispersion model using large-eddy simulation. LOHDIM-LES

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nakayama, Hiromasa; Nagai, Haruyasu

2016-03-01

We developed LOcal-scale High-resolution atmospheric DIspersion Model using Large-Eddy Simulation (LOHDIM-LES). This dispersion model is designed based on LES which is effective to reproduce unsteady behaviors of turbulent flows and plume dispersion. The basic equations are the continuity equation, the Navier-Stokes equation, and the scalar conservation equation. Buildings and local terrain variability are resolved by high-resolution grids with a few meters and these turbulent effects are represented by immersed boundary method. In simulating atmospheric turbulence, boundary layer flows are generated by a recycling turbulent inflow technique in a driver region set up at the upstream of the main analysis region. This turbulent inflow data are imposed at the inlet of the main analysis region. By this approach, the LOHDIM-LES can provide detailed information on wind velocities and plume concentration in the investigated area. (author)

CMIP5 model simulations of Ethiopian Kiremt-season precipitation: current climate and future changes

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Laifang; Li, Wenhong; Ballard, Tristan; Sun, Ge; Jeuland, Marc

2016-05-01

Kiremt-season (June-September) precipitation provides a significant water supply for Ethiopia, particularly in the central and northern regions. The response of Kiremt-season precipitation to climate change is thus of great concern to water resource managers. However, the complex processes that control Kiremt-season precipitation challenge the capability of general circulation models (GCMs) to accurately simulate precipitation amount and variability. This in turn raises questions about their utility for predicting future changes. This study assesses the impact of climate change on Kiremt-season precipitation using state-of-the-art GCMs participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5. Compared to models with a coarse resolution, high-resolution models (horizontal resolution <2°) can more accurately simulate precipitation, most likely due to their ability to capture precipitation induced by topography. Under the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 scenario, these high-resolution models project an increase in precipitation over central Highlands and northern Great Rift Valley in Ethiopia, but a decrease in precipitation over the southern part of the country. Such a dipole pattern is attributable to the intensification of the North Atlantic subtropical high (NASH) in a warmer climate, which influences Ethiopian Kiremt-season precipitation mainly by modulating atmospheric vertical motion. Diagnosis of the omega equation demonstrates that an intensified NASH increases (decreases) the advection of warm air and positive vorticity into the central Highlands and northern Great Rift Valley (southern part of the country), enhancing upward motion over the northern Rift Valley but decreasing elsewhere. Under the RCP 4.5 scenario, the high-resolution models project an intensification of the NASH by 15 (3 × 105 m2 s-2) geopotential meters (stream function) at the 850-hPa level, contributing to the projected precipitation change over Ethiopia. The

The last interglacial climate

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pedersen, Rasmus A.; Langen, Peter L.; Vinther, Bo M.

2017-01-01

The last interglacial climate was influenced by substantial changes in the annual insolation cycle that led to a warmer climate state with pronounced high northern latitude warming. We analyze the impact of the insolation changes 125,000 years before present using an equilibrium snapshot simulation...... with the EC-Earth coupled climate model at high spatial resolution. Using additional atmosphere-only simulations, we separate the direct impact from the changed insolation from the secondary contribution from changed sea surface conditions. These simulations are forced with a combination of last interglacial...

High-Resolution Urban Greenery Mapping for Micro-Climate Modelling Based on 3d City Models

Science.gov (United States)

Hofierka, J.; Gallay, M.; Kaňuk, J.; Šupinský, J.; Šašak, J.

2017-10-01

Urban greenery has various positive micro-climate effects including mitigation of heat islands. The primary root of heat islands in cities is in absorption of solar radiation by the mass of building structures, roads and other solid materials. The absorbed heat is subsequently re-radiated into the surroundings and increases ambient temperatures. The vegetation can stop and absorb most of incoming solar radiation mostly via the photosynthesis and evapotranspiration process. However, vegetation in mild climate of Europe manifests considerable annual seasonality which can also contribute to the seasonal change in the cooling effect of the vegetation on the urban climate. Modern methods of high-resolution mapping and new generations of sensors have brought opportunity to record the dynamics of urban greenery in a high resolution in spatial, spectral, and temporal domains. In this paper, we use the case study of the city of Košice in Eastern Slovakia to demonstrate the methodology of 3D mapping and modelling the urban greenery during one vegetation season in 2016. The purpose of this monitoring is to capture 3D effects of urban greenery on spatial distribution of solar radiation in urban environment. Terrestrial laser scanning was conducted on four selected sites within Košice in ultra-high spatial resolution. The entire study area, which included these four smaller sites, comprised 4 km2 of the central part of the city was flown within a single airborne lidar and photogrammetric mission to capture the upper parts of buildings and vegetation. The acquired airborne data were used to generate a 3D city model and the time series of terrestrial lidar data were integrated with the 3D city model. The results show that the terrestrial and airborne laser scanning techniques can be effectively used to monitor seasonal changes in foliage of trees in order to assess the transmissivity of the canopy for microclimate modelling.

Eulerian and Lagrangian statistics from high resolution numerical simulations of weakly compressible turbulence

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Benzi, R.; Biferale, L.; Fisher, R.T.; Lamb, D.Q.; Toschi, F.

2009-01-01

We report a detailed study of Eulerian and Lagrangian statistics from high resolution Direct Numerical Simulations of isotropic weakly compressible turbulence. Reynolds number at the Taylor microscale is estimated to be around 600. Eulerian and Lagrangian statistics is evaluated over a huge data

The impact of climate change on tourism in Germany, the UK and Ireland: a simulation study

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hamilton, Jacqueline; Tol, Richard

2007-01-01

We downscale the results of a global tourism simulation model at a national resolution to a regional resolution. We use this to investigate the impact of climate change on the regions of Germany, Ireland and the UK. Because of climate change, tourists from all three countries would spend more

Resolution on the program energy-climate

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

2008-01-01

This document presents the resolutions proposed in the resolution proposition n. 1261 and concerning the european Commission program on the energy policies and the climate change. Twelve resolution are presented on the energy sources development, the energy efficiency, the energy economy and the carbon taxes. (A.L.B.)

Improved Regional Climate Model Simulation of Precipitation by a Dynamical Coupling to a Hydrology Model

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Larsen, Morten Andreas Dahl; Drews, Martin; Hesselbjerg Christensen, Jens

convective precipitation systems. As a result climate model simulations let alone future projections of precipitation often exhibit substantial biases. Here we show that the dynamical coupling of a regional climate model to a detailed fully distributed hydrological model - including groundwater-, overland...... of local precipitation dynamics are seen for time scales of app. Seasonal duration and longer. We show that these results can be attributed to a more complete treatment of land surface feedbacks. The local scale effect on the atmosphere suggests that coupled high-resolution climate-hydrology models...... including a detailed 3D redistribution of sub- and land surface water have a significant potential for improving climate projections even diminishing the need for bias correction in climate-hydrology studies....

Using High Resolution Simulations with WRF/SSiB Regional Climate Model Constrained by In Situ Observations to Assess the Impacts of Dust in Snow in the Upper Colorado River Basin

Science.gov (United States)

Oaida, C. M.; Skiles, M.; Painter, T. H.; Xue, Y.

2015-12-01

The mountain snowpack is an essential resource for both the environment as well as society. Observational and energy balance modeling work have shown that dust on snow (DOS) in western U.S. (WUS) is a major contributor to snow processes, including snowmelt timing and runoff amount in regions like the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB). In order to accurately estimate the impact of DOS to the hydrologic cycle and water resources, now and under a changing climate, we need to be able to (1) adequately simulate the snowpack (accumulation), and (2) realistically represent DOS processes in models. Energy balance models do not capture the impact on a broader local or regional scale, nor the land-atmosphere feedbacks, while GCM studies cannot resolve orographic-related precipitation processes, and therefore snowpack accumulation, owing to coarse spatial resolution and smoother terrain. All this implies the impacts of dust on snow on the mountain snowpack and other hydrologic processes are likely not well captured in current modeling studies. Recent increase in computing power allows for RCMs to be used at higher spatial resolutions, while recent in situ observations of dust in snow properties can help constrain modeling simulations. Therefore, in the work presented here, we take advantage of these latest resources to address the some of the challenges outlined above. We employ the newly enhanced WRF/SSiB regional climate model at 4 km horizontal resolution. This scale has been shown by others to be adequate in capturing orographic processes over WUS. We also constrain the magnitude of dust deposition provided by a global chemistry and transport model, with in situ measurements taken at sites in the UCRB. Furthermore, we adjust the dust absorptive properties based on observed values at these sites, as opposed to generic global ones. This study aims to improve simulation of the impact of dust in snow on the hydrologic cycle and related water resources.

Impact of Spatial Soil and Climate Input Data Aggregation on Regional Yield Simulations.

Science.gov (United States)

Hoffmann, Holger; Zhao, Gang; Asseng, Senthold; Bindi, Marco; Biernath, Christian; Constantin, Julie; Coucheney, Elsa; Dechow, Rene; Doro, Luca; Eckersten, Henrik; Gaiser, Thomas; Grosz, Balázs; Heinlein, Florian; Kassie, Belay T; Kersebaum, Kurt-Christian; Klein, Christian; Kuhnert, Matthias; Lewan, Elisabet; Moriondo, Marco; Nendel, Claas; Priesack, Eckart; Raynal, Helene; Roggero, Pier P; Rötter, Reimund P; Siebert, Stefan; Specka, Xenia; Tao, Fulu; Teixeira, Edmar; Trombi, Giacomo; Wallach, Daniel; Weihermüller, Lutz; Yeluripati, Jagadeesh; Ewert, Frank

2016-01-01

We show the error in water-limited yields simulated by crop models which is associated with spatially aggregated soil and climate input data. Crop simulations at large scales (regional, national, continental) frequently use input data of low resolution. Therefore, climate and soil data are often generated via averaging and sampling by area majority. This may bias simulated yields at large scales, varying largely across models. Thus, we evaluated the error associated with spatially aggregated soil and climate data for 14 crop models. Yields of winter wheat and silage maize were simulated under water-limited production conditions. We calculated this error from crop yields simulated at spatial resolutions from 1 to 100 km for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Most models showed yields biased by <15% when aggregating only soil data. The relative mean absolute error (rMAE) of most models using aggregated soil data was in the range or larger than the inter-annual or inter-model variability in yields. This error increased further when both climate and soil data were aggregated. Distinct error patterns indicate that the rMAE may be estimated from few soil variables. Illustrating the range of these aggregation effects across models, this study is a first step towards an ex-ante assessment of aggregation errors in large-scale simulations.

Impact of Spatial Soil and Climate Input Data Aggregation on Regional Yield Simulations.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Holger Hoffmann

Full Text Available We show the error in water-limited yields simulated by crop models which is associated with spatially aggregated soil and climate input data. Crop simulations at large scales (regional, national, continental frequently use input data of low resolution. Therefore, climate and soil data are often generated via averaging and sampling by area majority. This may bias simulated yields at large scales, varying largely across models. Thus, we evaluated the error associated with spatially aggregated soil and climate data for 14 crop models. Yields of winter wheat and silage maize were simulated under water-limited production conditions. We calculated this error from crop yields simulated at spatial resolutions from 1 to 100 km for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Most models showed yields biased by <15% when aggregating only soil data. The relative mean absolute error (rMAE of most models using aggregated soil data was in the range or larger than the inter-annual or inter-model variability in yields. This error increased further when both climate and soil data were aggregated. Distinct error patterns indicate that the rMAE may be estimated from few soil variables. Illustrating the range of these aggregation effects across models, this study is a first step towards an ex-ante assessment of aggregation errors in large-scale simulations.

Geant4 simulation of a 3D high resolution gamma camera

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Akhdar, H.; Kezzar, K.; Aksouh, F.; Assemi, N.; AlGhamdi, S.; AlGarawi, M.; Gerl, J.

2015-01-01

The aim of this work is to develop a 3D gamma camera with high position resolution and sensitivity relying on both distance/absorption and Compton scattering techniques and without using any passive collimation. The proposed gamma camera is simulated in order to predict its performance using the full benefit of Geant4 features that allow the construction of the needed geometry of the detectors, have full control of the incident gamma particles and study the response of the detector in order to test the suggested geometries. Three different geometries are simulated and each configuration is tested with three different scintillation materials (LaBr3, LYSO and CeBr3)

Some lessons and thoughts from development of an old-fashioned high-resolution atmospheric general circulation model

Science.gov (United States)

Ohfuchi, Wataru; Enomoto, Takeshi; Yoshioka, Mayumi K.; Takaya, Koutarou

2014-05-01

Some high-resolution simulations with a conventional atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) were conducted right after the first Earth Simulator started operating in the spring of 2002. More simulations with various resolutions followed. The AGCM in this study, AFES (Agcm For the Earth Simulator), is a primitive equation spectral transform method model with a cumulus convection parameterization. In this presentation, some findings from comparisons between high and low-resolution simulations, and some future perspectives of old-fashioned AGCMs will be discussed. One obvious advantage of increasing resolution is capability of resolving the fine structures of topography and atmospheric flow. By increasing resolution from T39 (about 320 km horizontal grid interval) to T79 (160 km), to T159 (80 km) to T319 (40 km), topographic precipitation over Japan becomes increasingly realistic. This feature is necessary for climate and weather studies involving both global and local aspects. In order to resolve submesoscale (about 100 km horizontal scale) atmospheric circulation, about 10-km grid interval is necessary. Comparing T1279 (10 km) simulations with T319 ones, it is found that, for example, the intensity of heavy rain associated with Baiu front and the central pressure of typhoon become more realistic. These realistic submesoscale phenomena should have impact on larger-sale flow through dynamics and thermodynamics. An interesting finding by increasing horizontal resolution of a conventional AGCM is that some cumulus convection parameterizations, such as Arakawa-Schubert type scheme, gradually stop producing precipitation, while some others, such as Emanuel type, do not. With the former, the grid condensation increases with the model resolution to compensate. Which characteristics are more desirable is arguable but it is an important feature one has to consider when developing a high-resolution conventional AGCM. Many may think that conventional primitive equation

Evaluation of a Mesoscale Convective System in Variable-Resolution CESM

Science.gov (United States)

Payne, A. E.; Jablonowski, C.

2017-12-01

Warm season precipitation over the Southern Great Plains (SGP) follows a well observed diurnal pattern of variability, peaking at night-time, due to the eastward propagation of mesoscale convection systems that develop over the eastern slopes of the Rockies in the late afternoon. While most climate models are unable to adequately capture the organization of convection and characteristic pattern of precipitation over this region, models with high enough resolution to explicitly resolve convection show improvement. However, high resolution simulations are computationally expensive and, in the case of regional climate models, are subject to boundary conditions. Newly developed variable resolution global climate models strike a balance between the benefits of high-resolution regional climate models and the large-scale dynamics of global climate models and low computational cost. Recently developed parameterizations that are insensitive to the model grid scale provide a way to improve model performance. Here, we present an evaluation of the newly available Cloud Layers Unified by Binormals (CLUBB) parameterization scheme in a suite of variable-resolution CESM simulations with resolutions ranging from 110 km to 7 km within a regionally refined region centered over the SGP Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) site. Simulations utilize the hindcast approach developed by the Department of Energy's Cloud-Associated Parameterizations Testbed (CAPT) for the assessment of climate models. We limit our evaluation to a single mesoscale convective system that passed over the region on May 24, 2008. The effects of grid-resolution on the timing and intensity of precipitation, as well as, on the transition from shallow to deep convection are assessed against ground-based observations from the SGP ARM site, satellite observations and ERA-Interim reanalysis.

High-resolution paleolimnology opens new management perspectives for lakes adaptation to climate warming

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marie-Elodie ePerga

2015-07-01

Full Text Available Varved lake sediments provide opportunities for high-resolution paleolimnological investigations that may extend monitoring surveys in order to target priority management actions under climate warming. This paper provides the synthesis of an international research program relying on >150 years-long, varved records for three managed perialpine lakes in Europe (Lakes Geneva, Annecy and Bourget. The dynamics of the dominant, local human pressures, as well as the ecological responses in the pelagic, benthic and littoral habitats were reconstructed using classical and newly developed paleo-proxies. Statistical modelling achieved the hierarchization of the drivers of their ecological trajectories. All three lakes underwent different levels of eutrophication in the first half of the XXth century, followed by re-oligotrophication. Climate warming came along with a 2°C increase in air temperature over the last century, to which lakes were unequally thermally vulnerable. Unsurprisingly, phosphorous concentration has been the dominant ecological driver over the last century. Yet, other human-influenced, local environmental drivers (fisheries management practices, river regulations have also significantly inflected ecological trajectories. Climate change has been impacting all habitats at rates that, in some cases, exceeded those of local factors. The amplitude and ecological responses to similar climate change varied between lakes, but, at least for pelagic habitats, rather depended on the intensity of local human pressures than on the thermal effect of climate change. Deep habitats yet showed higher sensitivity to climate change but substantial influence of river flows. As a consequence, adapted local management strategies, fully integrating nutrient inputs, fisheries management and hydrological regulations, may enable mitigating the deleterious consequences of ongoing climate change on these ecosystems.

Kinetic energy spectra, vertical resolution and dissipation in high-resolution atmospheric simulations.

Science.gov (United States)

Skamarock, W. C.

2017-12-01

We have performed week-long full-physics simulations with the MPAS global model at 15 km cell spacing using vertical mesh spacings of 800, 400, 200 and 100 meters in the mid-troposphere through the mid-stratosphere. We find that the horizontal kinetic energy spectra in the upper troposphere and stratosphere does not converge with increasing vertical resolution until we reach 200 meter level spacing. Examination of the solutions indicates that significant inertia-gravity waves are not vertically resolved at the lower vertical resolutions. Diagnostics from the simulations indicate that the primary kinetic energy dissipation results from the vertical mixing within the PBL parameterization and from the gravity-wave drag parameterization, with smaller but significant contributions from damping in the vertical transport scheme and from the horizontal filters in the dynamical core. Most of the kinetic energy dissipation in the free atmosphere occurs within breaking mid-latitude baroclinic waves. We will briefly review these results and their implications for atmospheric model configuration and for atmospheric dynamics, specifically that related to the dynamics associated with the mesoscale kinetic energy spectrum.

Assessing uncertainty in high-resolution spatial climate data across the US Northeast.

Science.gov (United States)

Bishop, Daniel A; Beier, Colin M

2013-01-01

Local and regional-scale knowledge of climate change is needed to model ecosystem responses, assess vulnerabilities and devise effective adaptation strategies. High-resolution gridded historical climate (GHC) products address this need, but come with multiple sources of uncertainty that are typically not well understood by data users. To better understand this uncertainty in a region with a complex climatology, we conducted a ground-truthing analysis of two 4 km GHC temperature products (PRISM and NRCC) for the US Northeast using 51 Cooperative Network (COOP) weather stations utilized by both GHC products. We estimated GHC prediction error for monthly temperature means and trends (1980-2009) across the US Northeast and evaluated any landscape effects (e.g., elevation, distance from coast) on those prediction errors. Results indicated that station-based prediction errors for the two GHC products were similar in magnitude, but on average, the NRCC product predicted cooler than observed temperature means and trends, while PRISM was cooler for means and warmer for trends. We found no evidence for systematic sources of uncertainty across the US Northeast, although errors were largest at high elevations. Errors in the coarse-scale (4 km) digital elevation models used by each product were correlated with temperature prediction errors, more so for NRCC than PRISM. In summary, uncertainty in spatial climate data has many sources and we recommend that data users develop an understanding of uncertainty at the appropriate scales for their purposes. To this end, we demonstrate a simple method for utilizing weather stations to assess local GHC uncertainty and inform decisions among alternative GHC products.

High resolution real time capable combustion chamber simulation; Zeitlich hochaufloesende echtzeitfaehige Brennraumsimulation

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Piewek, J. [Volkswagen AG, Wolfsburg (Germany)

2008-07-01

The article describes a zero-dimensional model for the real time capable combustion chamber pressure calculation with analogue pressure sensor output. The closed-loop-operation of an Engine Control Unit is shown at the hardware-in-the-loop-simulator (HiL simulator) for a 4-cylinder common rail diesel engine. The presentation of the model focuses on the simulation of the load variation which does not depend on the injection system and thus the simulated heat release rate. Particular attention is paid to the simulation and the resulting test possibilities regarding to full-variable valve gears. It is shown that black box models consisting in the HiL mean value model for the aspirated gas mass, the exhaust gas temperature after the outlet valve and the mean indicated pressure can be replaced by calculations from the high-resolution combustion chamber model. (orig.)

A high-resolution regional reanalysis for the European CORDEX region

Science.gov (United States)

Bollmeyer, Christoph; Keller, Jan; Ohlwein, Christian; Wahl, Sabrina

2015-04-01

Within the Hans-Ertel-Centre for Weather Research (HErZ), the climate monitoring branch concentrates efforts on the assessment and analysis of regional climate in Germany and Europe. In joint cooperation with DWD (German Weather Service), a high-resolution reanalysis system based on the COSMO model has been developed. Reanalyses gain more and more importance as a source of meteorological information for many purposes and applications. Several global reanalyses projects (e.g., ERA, MERRA, CSFR, JMA9) produce and verify these data sets to provide time series as long as possible combined with a high data quality. Due to a spatial resolution down to 50-70km and 3-hourly temporal output, they are not suitable for small scale problems (e.g., regional climate assessment, meso-scale NWP verification, input for subsequent models such as river runoff simulations, renewable energy applications). The implementation of regional reanalyses based on a limited area model along with a data assimilation scheme is able to generate reanalysis data sets with high spatio-temporal resolution. The work presented here focuses on two regional reanalyses for Europe and Germany. The European reanalysis COSMO-REA6 matches the CORDEX EURO-11 specifications, albeit at a higher spatial resolution, i.e., 0.055° (6km) instead of 0.11° (12km). Nested into COSMO-REA6 is COSMO-REA2, a convective-scale reanalysis with 2km resolution for Germany. COSMO-REA6 comprises the assimilation of observational data using the existing nudging scheme of COSMO and is complemented by a special soil moisture analysis and boundary conditions given by ERA-Interim data. COSMO-REA2 also uses the nudging scheme complemented by a latent heat nudging of radar information. The reanalysis data set currently covers 17 years (1997-2013) for COSMO-REA6 and 4 years (2010-2013) for COSMO-REA2 with a very large set of output variables and a high temporal output step of hourly 3D-fields and quarter-hourly 2D-fields. The evaluation

A Decade-Long European-Scale Convection-Resolving Climate Simulation on GPUs

Science.gov (United States)

Leutwyler, D.; Fuhrer, O.; Ban, N.; Lapillonne, X.; Lüthi, D.; Schar, C.

2016-12-01

Convection-resolving models have proven to be very useful tools in numerical weather prediction and in climate research. However, due to their extremely demanding computational requirements, they have so far been limited to short simulations and/or small computational domains. Innovations in the supercomputing domain have led to new supercomputer designs that involve conventional multi-core CPUs and accelerators such as graphics processing units (GPUs). One of the first atmospheric models that has been fully ported to GPUs is the Consortium for Small-Scale Modeling weather and climate model COSMO. This new version allows us to expand the size of the simulation domain to areas spanning continents and the time period up to one decade. We present results from a decade-long, convection-resolving climate simulation over Europe using the GPU-enabled COSMO version on a computational domain with 1536x1536x60 gridpoints. The simulation is driven by the ERA-interim reanalysis. The results illustrate how the approach allows for the representation of interactions between synoptic-scale and meso-scale atmospheric circulations at scales ranging from 1000 to 10 km. We discuss some of the advantages and prospects from using GPUs, and focus on the performance of the convection-resolving modeling approach on the European scale. Specifically we investigate the organization of convective clouds and on validate hourly rainfall distributions with various high-resolution data sets.

Just-in-time Time Data Analytics and Visualization of Climate Simulations using the Bellerophon Framework

Science.gov (United States)

Anantharaj, V. G.; Venzke, J.; Lingerfelt, E.; Messer, B.

2015-12-01

Climate model simulations are used to understand the evolution and variability of earth's climate. Unfortunately, high-resolution multi-decadal climate simulations can take days to weeks to complete. Typically, the simulation results are not analyzed until the model runs have ended. During the course of the simulation, the output may be processed periodically to ensure that the model is preforming as expected. However, most of the data analytics and visualization are not performed until the simulation is finished. The lengthy time period needed for the completion of the simulation constrains the productivity of climate scientists. Our implementation of near real-time data visualization analytics capabilities allows scientists to monitor the progress of their simulations while the model is running. Our analytics software executes concurrently in a co-scheduling mode, monitoring data production. When new data are generated by the simulation, a co-scheduled data analytics job is submitted to render visualization artifacts of the latest results. These visualization output are automatically transferred to Bellerophon's data server located at ORNL's Compute and Data Environment for Science (CADES) where they are processed and archived into Bellerophon's database. During the course of the experiment, climate scientists can then use Bellerophon's graphical user interface to view animated plots and their associated metadata. The quick turnaround from the start of the simulation until the data are analyzed permits research decisions and projections to be made days or sometimes even weeks sooner than otherwise possible! The supercomputer resources used to run the simulation are unaffected by co-scheduling the data visualization jobs, so the model runs continuously while the data are visualized. Our just-in-time data visualization software looks to increase climate scientists' productivity as climate modeling moves into exascale era of computing.

High resolution simulations of orographic flow over a complex terrain on the Southeast coast of Brazil

Science.gov (United States)

Chou, S. C.; Zolino, M. M.; Gomes, J. L.; Bustamante, J. F.; Lima-e-Silva, P. P.

2012-04-01

The Eta Model is used operationally by CPTEC to produce weather forecasts over South America since 1997. The model has gone through upgrades. In order to prepare the model for operational higher resolution forecasts, the model is configured and tested over a region of complex topography located near the coast of Southeast Brazil. The Eta Model was configured, with 2-km horizontal resolution and 50 layers. The Eta-2km is a second nesting, it is driven by Eta-15km, which in its turn is driven by Era-Interim reanalyses. The model domain includes the two Brazilians cities, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, urban areas, preserved tropical forest, pasture fields, and complex terrain and coastline. Mountains can rise up to about 700m. The region suffers frequent events of floods and landslides. The objective of this work is to evaluate high resolution simulations of wind and temperature in this complex area. Verification of model runs uses observations taken from the nuclear power plant. Accurate near-surface wind direction and magnitude are needed for the plant emergency plan and winds are highly sensitive to model spatial resolution and atmospheric stability. Verification of two cases during summer shows that model has clear diurnal cycle signal for wind in that region. The area is characterized by weak winds which makes the simulation more difficult. The simulated wind magnitude is about 1.5m/s, which is close to observations of about 2m/s; however, the observed change of wind direction of the sea breeze is fast whereas it is slow in the simulations. Nighttime katabatic flow is captured by the simulations. Comparison against Eta-5km runs show that the valley circulation is better described in the 2-km resolution run. Simulated temperatures follow closely the observed diurnal cycle. Experiments improving some surface conditions such as the surface temperature and land cover show simulation error reduction and improved diurnal cycle.

Improving MJO Prediction and Simulation Using AGCM Coupled Ocean Model with Refined Vertical Resolution

Science.gov (United States)

Tu, Chia-Ying; Tseng, Wan-Ling; Kuo, Pei-Hsuan; Lan, Yung-Yao; Tsuang, Ben-Jei; Hsu, Huang-Hsiung

2017-04-01

Precipitation in Taiwan area is significantly influenced by MJO (Madden-Julian Oscillation) in the boreal winter. This study is therefore conducted by toggling the MJO prediction and simulation with a unique model structure. The one-dimensional TKE (Turbulence Kinetic Energy) type ocean model SIT (Snow, Ice, Thermocline) with refined vertical resolution near surface is able to resolve cool skin, as well as diurnal warm layer. SIT can simulate accurate SST and hence give precise air-sea interaction. By coupling SIT with ECHAM5 (MPI-Meteorology), CAM5 (NCAR) and HiRAM (GFDL), the MJO simulations in 20-yrs climate integrations conducted by three SIT-coupled AGCMs are significant improved comparing to those driven by prescribed SST. The horizontal resolutions in ECHAM5, CAM5 and HiRAM are 2-deg., 1-deg and 0.5-deg., respectively. This suggests that the improvement of MJO simulation by coupling SIT is AGCM-resolution independent. This study further utilizes HiRAM coupled SIT to evaluate its MJO forecast skill. HiRAM has been recognized as one of the best model for seasonal forecasts of hurricane/typhoon activity (Zhao et al., 2009; Chen & Lin, 2011; 2013), but was not as successful in MJO forecast. The preliminary result of the HiRAM-SIT experiment during DYNAMO period shows improved success in MJO forecast. These improvements of MJO prediction and simulation in both hindcast experiments and climate integrations are mainly from better-simulated SST diurnal cycle and diurnal amplitude, which is contributed by the refined vertical resolution near ocean surface in SIT. Keywords: MJO Predictability, DYNAMO

Experimental Investigation and High Resolution Simulation of In-Situ Combustion Processes

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Margot Gerritsen; Tony Kovscek

2008-04-30

This final technical report describes work performed for the project 'Experimental Investigation and High Resolution Numerical Simulator of In-Situ Combustion Processes', DE-FC26-03NT15405. In summary, this work improved our understanding of in-situ combustion (ISC) process physics and oil recovery. This understanding was translated into improved conceptual models and a suite of software algorithms that extended predictive capabilities. We pursued experimental, theoretical, and numerical tasks during the performance period. The specific project objectives were (i) identification, experimentally, of chemical additives/injectants that improve combustion performance and delineation of the physics of improved performance, (ii) establishment of a benchmark one-dimensional, experimental data set for verification of in-situ combustion dynamics computed by simulators, (iii) develop improved numerical methods that can be used to describe in-situ combustion more accurately, and (iv) to lay the underpinnings of a highly efficient, 3D, in-situ combustion simulator using adaptive mesh refinement techniques and parallelization. We believe that project goals were met and exceeded as discussed.

A regional-scale, high resolution dynamical malaria model that accounts for population density, climate and surface hydrology.

Science.gov (United States)

Tompkins, Adrian M; Ermert, Volker

2013-02-18

The relative roles of climate variability and population related effects in malaria transmission could be better understood if regional-scale dynamical malaria models could account for these factors. A new dynamical community malaria model is introduced that accounts for the temperature and rainfall influences on the parasite and vector life cycles which are finely resolved in order to correctly represent the delay between the rains and the malaria season. The rainfall drives a simple but physically based representation of the surface hydrology. The model accounts for the population density in the calculation of daily biting rates. Model simulations of entomological inoculation rate and circumsporozoite protein rate compare well to data from field studies from a wide range of locations in West Africa that encompass both seasonal endemic and epidemic fringe areas. A focus on Bobo-Dioulasso shows the ability of the model to represent the differences in transmission rates between rural and peri-urban areas in addition to the seasonality of malaria. Fine spatial resolution regional integrations for Eastern Africa reproduce the malaria atlas project (MAP) spatial distribution of the parasite ratio, and integrations for West and Eastern Africa show that the model grossly reproduces the reduction in parasite ratio as a function of population density observed in a large number of field surveys, although it underestimates malaria prevalence at high densities probably due to the neglect of population migration. A new dynamical community malaria model is publicly available that accounts for climate and population density to simulate malaria transmission on a regional scale. The model structure facilitates future development to incorporate migration, immunity and interventions.

Simulation of the Impact of Climate Variability on Malaria Transmission in the Sahel

Science.gov (United States)

Bomblies, A.; Eltahir, E.; Duchemin, J.

2007-12-01

A coupled hydrology and entomology model for simulation of malaria transmission and malaria transmitting mosquito population dynamics is presented. Model development and validation is done using field data and observations collected at Banizoumbou and Zindarou, Niger spanning three wet seasons, from 2005 through 2007. The primary model objective is the accurate determination of climate variability effects on village scale malaria transmission. Malaria transmission dependence on climate variables is highly nonlinear and complex. Temperature and humidity affect mosquito longevity, temperature controls parasite development rates in the mosquito as well as subadult mosquito development rates, and precipitation determines the formation and persistence of adequate breeding pools. Moreover, unsaturated zone hydrology influences overland flow, and climate controlled evapotranspiration rates and root zone uptake therefore also influence breeding pool formation. High resolution distributed hydrologic simulation allows representation of the small-scale ephemeral pools that constitute the primary habitat of Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes, the dominant malaria vectors in the Niger Sahel. Remotely sensed soil type, vegetation type, and microtopography rasters are used to assign the distributed parameter fields for simulation of the land surface hydrologic response to precipitation and runoff generation. Predicted runoff from each cell flows overland and into topographic depressions, with explicit representation of infiltration and evapotranspiration. The model's entomology component interacts with simulated pools. Subadult (aquatic stage) mosquito breeding is simulated in the pools, and water temperature dependent stage advancement rates regulate adult mosquito emergence into the model domain. Once emerged, adult mosquitoes are tracked as independent individual agents that interact with their immediate environment. Attributes relevant to malaria transmission such as gonotrophic

High-Resolution Sonars: What Resolution Do We Need for Target Recognition?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pailhas Yan

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Target recognition in sonar imagery has long been an active research area in the maritime domain, especially in the mine-counter measure context. Recently it has received even more attention as new sensors with increased resolution have been developed; new threats to critical maritime assets and a new paradigm for target recognition based on autonomous platforms have emerged. With the recent introduction of Synthetic Aperture Sonar systems and high-frequency sonars, sonar resolution has dramatically increased and noise levels decreased. Sonar images are distance images but at high resolution they tend to appear visually as optical images. Traditionally algorithms have been developed specifically for imaging sonars because of their limited resolution and high noise levels. With high-resolution sonars, algorithms developed in the image processing field for natural images become applicable. However, the lack of large datasets has hampered the development of such algorithms. Here we present a fast and realistic sonar simulator enabling development and evaluation of such algorithms.We develop a classifier and then analyse its performances using our simulated synthetic sonar images. Finally, we discuss sensor resolution requirements to achieve effective classification of various targets and demonstrate that with high resolution sonars target highlight analysis is the key for target recognition.

Extreme climate in China. Facts, simulation and projection

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Wang, Hui-Jun; Sun, Jian-Qi; Chen, Huo-Po; Zhu, Ya-Li; Zhang, Ying; Jiang, Da-Bang; Lang, Xian-Mei; Fan, Ke; Yu, En-Tao [Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (China). Inst. of Atmospheric Physics; Yang, Song [NOAA Climate Prediction Center, Camp Springs, MD (United States)

2012-06-15

In this paper, studies on extreme climate in China including extreme temperature and precipitation, dust weather activity, tropical cyclone activity, intense snowfall and cold surge activity, floods, and droughts are reviewed based on the peer-reviewed publications in recent decades. The review is focused first on the climatological features, variability, and trends in the past half century and then on simulations and projections based on global and regional climate models. As the annual mean surface air temperature (SAT) increased throughout China, heat wave intensity and frequency overall increased in the past half century, with a large rate after the 1980s. The daily or yearly minimum SAT increased more significantly than the mean or maximum SAT. The long-term change in precipitation is predominantly characterized by the so-called southern flood and northern drought pattern in eastern China and by the overall increase over Northwest China. The interdecadal variation of monsoon, represented by the monsoon weakening in the end of 1970s, is largely responsible for this change in mean precipitation. Precipitation-related extreme events (e.g., heavy rainfall and intense snowfall) have become more frequent and intense generally over China in the recent years, with large spatial features. Dust weather activity, however, has become less frequent over northern China in the recent years, as result of weakened cold surge activity, reinforced precipitation, and improved vegetation condition. State-of-the-art climate models are capable of reproducing some features of the mean climate and extreme climate events. However, discrepancies among models in simulating and projecting the mean and extreme climate are also demonstrated by many recent studies. Regional models with higher resolutions often perform better than global models. To predict and project climate variations and extremes, many new approaches and schemes based on dynamical models, statistical methods, or their

Evaluating Galactic Habitability Using High Resolution Cosmological Simulations of Galaxy Formation

OpenAIRE

Forgan, Duncan; Dayal, Pratika; Cockell, Charles; Libeskind, Noam

2015-01-01

D. F. acknowledges support from STFC consolidated grant ST/J001422/1, and the ‘ECOGAL’ ERC Advanced Grant. P. D. acknowledges the support of the Addison Wheeler Fellowship awarded by the Institute of Advanced Study at Durham University. N. I. L. is supported by the Deutsche Forschungs Gemeinschaft (DFG). We present the first model that couples high-resolution simulations of the formation of local group galaxies with calculations of the galactic habitable zone (GHZ), a region of space which...

Regional climate simulations with COSMO-CLM over MENA-CORDEX domain

Science.gov (United States)

Galluccio, Salvatore; Bucchignani, Edoardo; Mercogliano, Paola; Montesarchio, Myriam

2014-05-01

In the frame of WCRP Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX), a set of common Regional Climate Downscaling (RCD) domains has been defined, as a prerequisite for the development of model evaluation and climate projection frameworks. CORDEX domains encompass the majority of land areas of the world. In this work, climate simulations have been performed over MENA-CORDEX domain, which includes North-Africa, southern Europe and the whole Arabian peninsula. The non-hydrostatic regional climate model COSMO-CLM has been used. At CMCC, regional climate modelling is a part of an integrated simulation system and it has been used in different European and African projects to provide qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the hydrogeological and public health risks. A series of simulations has been conducted over the MENA-CORDEX area at spatial resolution of 0.44°. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to adjust the model configuration to better reproduce the observed climate data. The numerical simulations were driven by ERA-Interim reanalysis (horizontal resolution of 0.703°) for the period 1979-1984; the first year, was considered as a spin up period. The validation was performed by using several data sets: CRU data set was used to validate temperature, precipitation and cloud cover; MERRA data set was used to validate temperature and precipitation and GPCP for precipitation. The model sensitivity to the external parameters was tested considering two different configurations for the surface albedo. In the first one, albedo is only function of soil-type whereas in the second configuration it is prescribed by two external fields for dry and saturated soil based on MODIS data. Moreover, we tested two aerosol distributions as well, namely the default Tanre aerosol distribution and aerosol maps according to Tegen (NASA/GISS). We found, as expected, a significant sensitivity, in particular on the African region. We also varied tuning and physical parameters, such

AUTOMATIC INTERPRETATION OF HIGH RESOLUTION SAR IMAGES: FIRST RESULTS OF SAR IMAGE SIMULATION FOR SINGLE BUILDINGS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

J. Tao

2012-09-01

Full Text Available Due to the all-weather data acquisition capabilities, high resolution space borne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR plays an important role in remote sensing applications like change detection. However, because of the complex geometric mapping of buildings in urban areas, SAR images are often hard to interpret. SAR simulation techniques ease the visual interpretation of SAR images, while fully automatic interpretation is still a challenge. This paper presents a method for supporting the interpretation of high resolution SAR images with simulated radar images using a LiDAR digital surface model (DSM. Line features are extracted from the simulated and real SAR images and used for matching. A single building model is generated from the DSM and used for building recognition in the SAR image. An application for the concept is presented for the city centre of Munich where the comparison of the simulation to the TerraSAR-X data shows a good similarity. Based on the result of simulation and matching, special features (e.g. like double bounce lines, shadow areas etc. can be automatically indicated in SAR image.

Crop Yield Simulations Using Multiple Regional Climate Models in the Southwestern United States

Science.gov (United States)

Stack, D.; Kafatos, M.; Kim, S.; Kim, J.; Walko, R. L.

2013-12-01

Agricultural productivity (described by crop yield) is strongly dependent on climate conditions determined by meteorological parameters (e.g., temperature, rainfall, and solar radiation). California is the largest producer of agricultural products in the United States, but crops in associated arid and semi-arid regions live near their physiological limits (e.g., in hot summer conditions with little precipitation). Thus, accurate climate data are essential in assessing the impact of climate variability on agricultural productivity in the Southwestern United States and other arid regions. To address this issue, we produced simulated climate datasets and used them as input for the crop production model. For climate data, we employed two different regional climate models (WRF and OLAM) using a fine-resolution (8km) grid. Performances of the two different models are evaluated in a fine-resolution regional climate hindcast experiment for 10 years from 2001 to 2010 by comparing them to the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) dataset. Based on this comparison, multi-model ensembles with variable weighting are used to alleviate model bias and improve the accuracy of crop model productivity over large geographic regions (county and state). Finally, by using a specific crop-yield simulation model (APSIM) in conjunction with meteorological forcings from the multi-regional climate model ensemble, we demonstrate the degree to which maize yields are sensitive to the regional climate in the Southwestern United States.

SPECTRA OF STRONG MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC TURBULENCE FROM HIGH-RESOLUTION SIMULATIONS

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Beresnyak, Andrey

2014-01-01

Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence is present in a variety of solar and astrophysical environments. Solar wind fluctuations with frequencies lower than 0.1 Hz are believed to be mostly governed by Alfvénic turbulence with particle transport depending on the power spectrum and the anisotropy of such turbulence. Recently, conflicting spectral slopes for the inertial range of MHD turbulence have been reported by different groups. Spectral shapes from earlier simulations showed that MHD turbulence is less scale-local compared with hydrodynamic turbulence. This is why higher-resolution simulations, and careful and rigorous numerical analysis is especially needed for the MHD case. In this Letter, we present two groups of simulations with resolution up to 4096 3 , which are numerically well-resolved and have been analyzed with an exact and well-tested method of scaling study. Our results from both simulation groups indicate that the asymptotic power spectral slope for all energy-related quantities, such as total energy and residual energy, is around –1.7, close to Kolmogorov's –5/3. This suggests that residual energy is a constant fraction of the total energy and that in the asymptotic regime of Alfvénic turbulence magnetic and kinetic spectra have the same scaling. The –1.5 slope for energy and the –2 slope for residual energy, which have been suggested earlier, are incompatible with our numerics

Assessing Forest Carbon Response to Climate Change and Disturbances Using Long-term Hydro-climatic Observations and Simulations

Science.gov (United States)

Trettin, C.; Dai, Z.; Amatya, D. M.

2014-12-01

Long-term climatic and hydrologic observations on the Santee Experimental Forest in the lower coastal plain of South Carolina were used to estimate long-term changes in hydrology and forest carbon dynamics for a pair of first-order watersheds. Over 70 years of climate data indicated that warming in this forest area in the last decades was faster than the global mean; 35+ years of hydrologic records showed that forest ecosystem succession three years following Hurricane Hugo caused a substantial change in the ratio of runoff to precipitation. The change in this relationship between the paired watersheds was attributed to altered evapotranspiration processes caused by greater abundance of pine in the treatment watershed and regeneration of the mixed hardwood-pine forest on the reference watershed. The long-term records and anomalous observations are highly valuable for reliable calibration and validation of hydrological and biogeochemical models capturing the effects of climate variability. We applied the hydrological model MIKESHE that showed that runoff and water table level are sensitive to global warming, and that the sustained warming trends can be expected to decrease stream discharge and lower the mean water table depth. The spatially-explicit biogeochemical model Forest-DNDC, validated using biomass measurements from the watersheds, was used to assess carbon dynamics in response to high resolution hydrologic observation data and simulation results. The simulations showed that the long-term spatiotemporal carbon dynamics, including biomass and fluxes of soil carbon dioxide and methane were highly regulated by disturbance regimes, climatic conditions and water table depth. The utility of linked-modeling framework demonstrated here to assess biogeochemical responses at the watershed scale suggests applications for assessing the consequences of climate change within an urbanizing forested landscape. The approach may also be applicable for validating large

Hydrological simulations driven by RCM climate scenarios at basin scale in the Po River, Italy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

R. Vezzoli

2014-09-01

Full Text Available River discharges are the main expression of the hydrological cycle and are the results of climate natural variability. The signal of climate changes occurrence raises the question of how it will impact on river flows and on their extreme manifestations: floods and droughts. This question can be addressed through numerical simulations spanning from the past (1971 to future (2100 under different climate change scenarios. This work addresses the capability of a modelling chain to reproduce the observed discharge of the Po River over the period 1971–2000. The modelling chain includes climate and hydrological/hydraulic models and its performance is evaluated through indices based on the flow duration curve. The climate datasets used for the 1971–2000 period are (a a high resolution observed climate dataset, and COSMO-CLM regional climate model outputs with (b perfect boundary condition, ERA40 Reanalysis, and (c suboptimal boundary conditions provided by the global climate model CMCC–CM. The aim of the different simulations is to evaluate how the uncertainties introduced by the choice of the regional and/or global climate models propagate in the simulated discharges. This point is relevant to interpret the results of the simulated discharges when scenarios for the future are considered. The hydrological/hydraulic components are simulated through a physically-based distributed model (TOPKAPI and a water balance model at the basin scale (RIBASIM. The aim of these first simulations is to quantify the uncertainties introduced by each component of the modelling chain and their propagation. Estimation of the overall uncertainty is relevant to correctly understand the future river flow regimes. The results show how bias correction algorithms can help in reducing the overall uncertainty associated to the different stages of the modelling chain.

Simulation studies for a high resolution time projection chamber at the international linear collider

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Muennich, A.

2007-03-26

The International Linear Collider (ILC) is planned to be the next large accelerator. The ILC will be able to perform high precision measurements only possible at the clean environment of electron positron collisions. In order to reach this high accuracy, the requirements for the detector performance are challenging. Several detector concepts are currently under study. The understanding of the detector and its performance will be crucial to extract the desired physics results from the data. To optimise the detector design, simulation studies are needed. Simulation packages like GEANT4 allow to model the detector geometry and simulate the energy deposit in the different materials. However, the detector response taking into account the transportation of the produced charge to the readout devices and the effects ofthe readout electronics cannot be described in detail. These processes in the detector will change the measured position of the energy deposit relative to the point of origin. The determination of this detector response is the task of detailed simulation studies, which have to be carried out for each subdetector. A high resolution Time Projection Chamber (TPC) with gas amplification based on micro pattern gas detectors, is one of the options for the main tracking system at the ILC. In the present thesis a detailed simulation tool to study the performance of a TPC was developed. Its goal is to find the optimal settings to reach an excellent momentum and spatial resolution. After an introduction to the present status of particle physics and the ILC project with special focus on the TPC as central tracker, the simulation framework is presented. The basic simulation methods and implemented processes are introduced. Within this stand-alone simulation framework each electron produced by primary ionisation is transferred through the gas volume and amplified using Gas Electron Multipliers (GEMs). The output format of the simulation is identical to the raw data from a

Transient regional climate change: analysis of the summer climate response in a high-resolution, century-scale, ensemble experiment over the continental United States

Science.gov (United States)

Diffenbaugh, Noah S.; Ashfaq, Moetasim; Scherer, Martin

2013-01-01

Integrating the potential for climate change impacts into policy and planning decisions requires quantification of the emergence of sub-regional climate changes that could occur in response to transient changes in global radiative forcing. Here we report results from a high-resolution, century-scale, ensemble simulation of climate in the United States, forced by atmospheric constituent concentrations from the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A1B scenario. We find that 21st century summer warming permanently emerges beyond the baseline decadal-scale variability prior to 2020 over most areas of the continental U.S. Permanent emergence beyond the baseline annual-scale variability shows much greater spatial heterogeneity, with emergence occurring prior to 2030 over areas of the southwestern U.S., but not prior to the end of the 21st century over much of the southcentral and southeastern U.S. The pattern of emergence of robust summer warming contrasts with the pattern of summer warming magnitude, which is greatest over the central U.S. and smallest over the western U.S. In addition to stronger warming, the central U.S. also exhibits stronger coupling of changes in surface air temperature, precipitation, and moisture and energy fluxes, along with changes in atmospheric circulation towards increased anticylonic anomalies in the mid-troposphere and a poleward shift in the mid-latitude jet aloft. However, as a fraction of the baseline variability, the transient warming over the central U.S. is smaller than the warming over the southwestern or northeastern U.S., delaying the emergence of the warming signal over the central U.S. Our comparisons with observations and the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 3 (CMIP3) ensemble of global climate model experiments suggest that near-term global warming is likely to cause robust sub-regional-scale warming over areas that exhibit relatively little baseline variability. In contrast, where there is greater

Monte Carlo Simulations of Ultra-High Energy Resolution Gamma Detectors for Nuclear Safeguards

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Robles, A.; Drury, O.B.; Friedrich, S.

2009-01-01

Ultra-high energy resolution superconducting gamma-ray detectors can improve the accuracy of non-destructive analysis for unknown radioactive materials. These detectors offer an order of magnitude improvement in resolution over conventional high purity germanium detectors. The increase in resolution reduces errors from line overlap and allows for the identification of weaker gamma-rays by increasing the magnitude of the peaks above the background. In order to optimize the detector geometry and to understand the spectral response function Geant4, a Monte Carlo simulation package coded in C++, was used to model the detectors. Using a 1 mm 3 Sn absorber and a monochromatic gamma source, different absorber geometries were tested. The simulation was expanded to include the Cu block behind the absorber and four layers of shielding required for detector operation at 0.1 K. The energy spectrum was modeled for an Am-241 and a Cs-137 source, including scattering events in the shielding, and the results were compared to experimental data. For both sources the main spectral features such as the photopeak, the Compton continuum, the escape x-rays and the backscatter peak were identified. Finally, the low energy response of a Pu-239 source was modeled to assess the feasibility of Pu-239 detection in spent fuel. This modeling of superconducting detectors can serve as a guide to optimize the configuration in future spectrometer designs.

GFDL's CM2 global coupled climate models. Part I: Formulation and simulation characteristics

Science.gov (United States)

Delworth, T.L.; Broccoli, A.J.; Rosati, A.; Stouffer, R.J.; Balaji, V.; Beesley, J.A.; Cooke, W.F.; Dixon, K.W.; Dunne, J.; Dunne, K.A.; Durachta, J.W.; Findell, K.L.; Ginoux, P.; Gnanadesikan, A.; Gordon, C.T.; Griffies, S.M.; Gudgel, R.; Harrison, M.J.; Held, I.M.; Hemler, R.S.; Horowitz, L.W.; Klein, S.A.; Knutson, T.R.; Kushner, P.J.; Langenhorst, A.R.; Lee, H.-C.; Lin, S.-J.; Lu, J.; Malyshev, S.L.; Milly, P.C.D.; Ramaswamy, V.; Russell, J.; Schwarzkopf, M.D.; Shevliakova, E.; Sirutis, J.J.; Spelman, M.J.; Stern, W.F.; Winton, M.; Wittenberg, A.T.; Wyman, B.; Zeng, F.; Zhang, R.

2006-01-01

The formulation and simulation characteristics of two new global coupled climate models developed at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) are described. The models were designed to simulate atmospheric and oceanic climate and variability from the diurnal time scale through multicentury climate change, given our computational constraints. In particular, an important goal was to use the same model for both experimental seasonal to interannual forecasting and the study of multicentury global climate change, and this goal has been achieved. Tw o versions of the coupled model are described, called CM2.0 and CM2.1. The versions differ primarily in the dynamical core used in the atmospheric component, along with the cloud tuning and some details of the land and ocean components. For both coupled models, the resolution of the land and atmospheric components is 2?? latitude ?? 2.5?? longitude; the atmospheric model has 24 vertical levels. The ocean resolution is 1?? in latitude and longitude, with meridional resolution equatorward of 30?? becoming progressively finer, such that the meridional resolution is 1/3?? at the equator. There are 50 vertical levels in the ocean, with 22 evenly spaced levels within the top 220 m. The ocean component has poles over North America and Eurasia to avoid polar filtering. Neither coupled model employs flux adjustments. The co ntrol simulations have stable, realistic climates when integrated over multiple centuries. Both models have simulations of ENSO that are substantially improved relative to previous GFDL coupled models. The CM2.0 model has been further evaluated as an ENSO forecast model and has good skill (CM2.1 has not been evaluated as an ENSO forecast model). Generally reduced temperature and salinity biases exist in CM2.1 relative to CM2.0. These reductions are associated with 1) improved simulations of surface wind stress in CM2.1 and associated changes in oceanic gyre circulations; 2) changes in cloud tuning and

How to use MPI communication in highly parallel climate simulations more easily and more efficiently.

Science.gov (United States)

Behrens, Jörg; Hanke, Moritz; Jahns, Thomas

2014-05-01

In this talk we present a way to facilitate efficient use of MPI communication for developers of climate models. Exploitation of the performance potential of today's highly parallel supercomputers with real world simulations is a complex task. This is partly caused by the low level nature of the MPI communication library which is the dominant communication tool at least for inter-node communication. In order to manage the complexity of the task, climate simulations with non-trivial communication patterns often use an internal abstraction layer above MPI without exploiting the benefits of communication aggregation or MPI-datatypes. The solution for the complexity and performance problem we propose is the communication library YAXT. This library is built on top of MPI and takes high level descriptions of arbitrary domain decompositions and automatically derives an efficient collective data exchange. Several exchanges can be aggregated in order to reduce latency costs. Examples are given which demonstrate the simplicity and the performance gains for selected climate applications.

Evaluations of high-resolution dynamically downscaled ensembles over the contiguous United States Climate Dynamics

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Zobel, Zachary; Wang, Jiali; Wuebbles, Donald J.; Kotamarthi, V. Rao

2018-02-01

This study uses Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model to evaluate the performance of six dynamical downscaled decadal historical simulations with 12-km resolution for a large domain (7200 x 6180 km) that covers most of North America. The initial and boundary conditions are from three global climate models (GCMs) and one reanalysis data. The GCMs employed in this study are the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Earth System Model with Generalized Ocean Layer Dynamics component, Community Climate System Model, version 4, and the Hadley Centre Global Environment Model, version 2-Earth System. The reanalysis data is from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction-US. Department of Energy Reanalysis II. We analyze the effects of bias correcting, the lateral boundary conditions and the effects of spectral nudging. We evaluate the model performance for seven surface variables and four upper atmospheric variables based on their climatology and extremes for seven subregions across the United States. The results indicate that the simulation’s performance depends on both location and the features/variable being tested. We find that the use of bias correction and/or nudging is beneficial in many situations, but employing these when running the RCM is not always an improvement when compared to the reference data. The use of an ensemble mean and median leads to a better performance in measuring the climatology, while it is significantly biased for the extremes, showing much larger differences than individual GCM driven model simulations from the reference data. This study provides a comprehensive evaluation of these historical model runs in order to make informed decisions when making future projections.

Sensitivity of MENA Tropical Rainbelt to Dust Shortwave Absorption: A High Resolution AGCM Experiment

KAUST Repository

Bangalath, Hamza Kunhu; Stenchikov, Georgiy L.

2016-01-01

Shortwave absorption is one of the most important, but the most uncertain, components of direct radiative effect by mineral dust. It has a broad range of estimates from different observational and modeling studies and there is no consensus on the strength of absorption. To elucidate the sensitivity of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) tropical summer rainbelt to a plausible range of uncertainty in dust shortwave absorption, AMIP-style global high resolution (25 km) simulations are conducted with and without dust, using the High-Resolution Atmospheric Model (HiRAM). Simulations with dust comprise three different cases by assuming dust as a very efficient, standard and inefficient absorber. Inter-comparison of these simulations shows that the response of the MENA tropical rainbelt is extremely sensitive to the strength of shortwave absorption. Further analyses reveal that the sensitivity of the rainbelt stems from the sensitivity of the multi-scale circulations that define the rainbelt. The maximum response and sensitivity are predicted over the northern edge of the rainbelt, geographically over Sahel. The sensitivity of the responses over the Sahel, especially that of precipitation, is comparable to the mean state. Locally, the response in precipitation reaches up to 50% of the mean, while dust is assumed to be a very efficient absorber. Taking into account that Sahel has a very high climate variability and is extremely vulnerable to changes in precipitation, the present study suggests the importance of reducing uncertainty in dust shortwave absorption for a better simulation and interpretation of the Sahel climate.

Sensitivity of MENA Tropical Rainbelt to Dust Shortwave Absorption: A High Resolution AGCM Experiment

KAUST Repository

Bangalath, Hamza Kunhu

2016-06-13

Shortwave absorption is one of the most important, but the most uncertain, components of direct radiative effect by mineral dust. It has a broad range of estimates from different observational and modeling studies and there is no consensus on the strength of absorption. To elucidate the sensitivity of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) tropical summer rainbelt to a plausible range of uncertainty in dust shortwave absorption, AMIP-style global high resolution (25 km) simulations are conducted with and without dust, using the High-Resolution Atmospheric Model (HiRAM). Simulations with dust comprise three different cases by assuming dust as a very efficient, standard and inefficient absorber. Inter-comparison of these simulations shows that the response of the MENA tropical rainbelt is extremely sensitive to the strength of shortwave absorption. Further analyses reveal that the sensitivity of the rainbelt stems from the sensitivity of the multi-scale circulations that define the rainbelt. The maximum response and sensitivity are predicted over the northern edge of the rainbelt, geographically over Sahel. The sensitivity of the responses over the Sahel, especially that of precipitation, is comparable to the mean state. Locally, the response in precipitation reaches up to 50% of the mean, while dust is assumed to be a very efficient absorber. Taking into account that Sahel has a very high climate variability and is extremely vulnerable to changes in precipitation, the present study suggests the importance of reducing uncertainty in dust shortwave absorption for a better simulation and interpretation of the Sahel climate.

Continuously on-­going regional climate hindcast simulations for impact applications

Science.gov (United States)

Anders, Ivonne; Piringer, Martin; Kaufmann, Hildegard; Knauder, Werner; Resch, Gernot; Andre, Konrad

2017-04-01

Observational data for e.g. temperature, precipitation, radiation, or wind are often used as meteorological forcing for different impact models, like e.g. crop models, urban models, economic models and energy system models. To assess a climate signal, the time period covered by the observation is often too short, they have gaps in between, and are inhomogeneous over time, due to changes in the measurements itself or in the near surrounding. Thus output from global and regional climate models can close the gap and provide homogeneous and physically consistent time series of meteorological parameters. CORDEX evaluation runs performed for the IPCC-AR5 provide a good base for the regional scale. However, with respect to climate services, continuously on-going hindcast simulations are required for regularly updated applications. The Climate Research group at the national Austrian weather service, ZAMG, is focusing on high mountain regions and, especially on the Alps. The hindcast-simulation performed with the regional climate model COSMO-CLM is forced by ERAinterim and optimized for the Alpine Region. The simulation available for the period of 1979-2015 in a spatial resolution of about 10km is prolonged ongoing and fullfils the customer's needs with respect of output variables, levels, intervals and statistical measures. One of the main tasks is to capture strong precipitation events which often occur during summer when low pressure systems develop over the Golf of Genoa, moving to the Northeast. This leads to floods and landslide events in Austria, Czech Republic and Germany. Such events are not sufficiently represented in the CORDEX-evaluation runs. ZAMG use high quality gridded precipitation and temperature data for the Alpine Region (1-6km) to evaluate the model performance. Data is provided e.g. to hydrological modellers (high water, low water), but also to assess icing capability of infrastructure or the calculation the separation distances between livestock

Twenty first century climate change as simulated by European climate models

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Cubasch, Ulrich

2007-01-01

Full text: Climate change simulation results for seven European state-of-the-art climate models, participating in the European research project ENSEMBLES (ENSEMBLE-based Predictions of Climate Changes and their Impacts), will be presented. Models from Norway, France, Germany, Denmark, and Great Britain, representing a sub-ensemble of the models contributing to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4), are included. Climate simulations are conducted with all the models for present-day climate and for future climate under the SRES A1B, A2, and B1 scenarios. The design of the simulations follows the guidelines of the IPCC AR4. The 21st century projections are compared to the corresponding present-day simulations. The ensemble mean global mean near surface temperature rise for the year 2099 compared to the 1961-1990 period amounts to 3.2Kforthe A1B scenario, to 4.1 K for the A2 scenario, and to 2.1 K for the B1 scenario. The spatial patterns of temperature change are robust among the contributing models with the largest temperature increase over the Arctic in boreal winter, stronger warming overland than over ocean, and little warming over the southern oceans. The ensemble mean globally averaged precipitation increases for the three scenarios (5.6%, 5.7%, and 3.8% for scenarios A1B, A2, and B1, respectively). The precipitation signals of the different models display a larger spread than the temperature signals. In general, precipitation increases in the Intertropical Convergence Zone and the mid- to high latitudes (most pronounced during the hemispheric winter) and decreases in the subtropics. Sea-level pressure decreases over the polar regions in all models and all scenarios, which is mainly compensated by a pressure increase in the subtropical highs. These changes imply an intensification of the Southern and Northern Annular Modes

NEUTRINO-DRIVEN CONVECTION IN CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVAE: HIGH-RESOLUTION SIMULATIONS

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Radice, David; Ott, Christian D. [TAPIR, Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, Mailcode 350-17, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States); Abdikamalov, Ernazar [Department of Physics, School of Science and Technology, Nazarbayev University, Astana 010000 (Kazakhstan); Couch, Sean M. [Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824 (United States); Haas, Roland [Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik, Albert-Einstein-Institut, D-14476 Golm (Germany); Schnetter, Erik, E-mail: dradice@caltech.edu [Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, ON (Canada)

2016-03-20

We present results from high-resolution semiglobal simulations of neutrino-driven convection in core-collapse supernovae. We employ an idealized setup with parameterized neutrino heating/cooling and nuclear dissociation at the shock front. We study the internal dynamics of neutrino-driven convection and its role in redistributing energy and momentum through the gain region. We find that even if buoyant plumes are able to locally transfer heat up to the shock, convection is not able to create a net positive energy flux and overcome the downward transport of energy from the accretion flow. Turbulent convection does, however, provide a significant effective pressure support to the accretion flow as it favors the accumulation of energy, mass, and momentum in the gain region. We derive an approximate equation that is able to explain and predict the shock evolution in terms of integrals of quantities such as the turbulent pressure in the gain region or the effects of nonradial motion of the fluid. We use this relation as a way to quantify the role of turbulence in the dynamics of the accretion shock. Finally, we investigate the effects of grid resolution, which we change by a factor of 20 between the lowest and highest resolution. Our results show that the shallow slopes of the turbulent kinetic energy spectra reported in previous studies are a numerical artifact. Kolmogorov scaling is progressively recovered as the resolution is increased.

NEUTRINO-DRIVEN CONVECTION IN CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVAE: HIGH-RESOLUTION SIMULATIONS

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Radice, David; Ott, Christian D.; Abdikamalov, Ernazar; Couch, Sean M.; Haas, Roland; Schnetter, Erik

2016-01-01

We present results from high-resolution semiglobal simulations of neutrino-driven convection in core-collapse supernovae. We employ an idealized setup with parameterized neutrino heating/cooling and nuclear dissociation at the shock front. We study the internal dynamics of neutrino-driven convection and its role in redistributing energy and momentum through the gain region. We find that even if buoyant plumes are able to locally transfer heat up to the shock, convection is not able to create a net positive energy flux and overcome the downward transport of energy from the accretion flow. Turbulent convection does, however, provide a significant effective pressure support to the accretion flow as it favors the accumulation of energy, mass, and momentum in the gain region. We derive an approximate equation that is able to explain and predict the shock evolution in terms of integrals of quantities such as the turbulent pressure in the gain region or the effects of nonradial motion of the fluid. We use this relation as a way to quantify the role of turbulence in the dynamics of the accretion shock. Finally, we investigate the effects of grid resolution, which we change by a factor of 20 between the lowest and highest resolution. Our results show that the shallow slopes of the turbulent kinetic energy spectra reported in previous studies are a numerical artifact. Kolmogorov scaling is progressively recovered as the resolution is increased

Monte-Carlo simulation of a high-resolution inverse geometry spectrometer on the SNS. Long Wavelength Target Station

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bordallo, H.N.; Herwig, K.W.

2001-01-01

Using the Monte-Carlo simulation program McStas, we present the design principles of the proposed high-resolution inverse geometry spectrometer on the SNS-Long Wavelength Target Station (LWTS). The LWTS will provide the high flux of long wavelength neutrons at the requisite pulse rate required by the spectrometer design. The resolution of this spectrometer lies between that routinely achieved by spin echo techniques and the design goal of the high power target station backscattering spectrometer. Covering this niche in energy resolution will allow systematic studies over the large dynamic range required by many disciplines, such as protein dynamics. (author)

High-resolution conodont oxygen isotope record of Ordovician climate change

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, J.; Chen, Z.; Algeo, T. J.

2013-12-01

The Ordovician Period was characterized by several major events, including a prolonged 'super greenhouse' during the Early Ordovician, the 'Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE)' of the Middle and early Late Ordovician, and the Hirnantian ice age and mass extinction of the latest Ordovician (Webby et al., 2004, The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, Columbia University Press). The cause of the rapid diversification of marine invertebrates during the GOBE is not clear, however, and several scenarios have been proposed including widespread development of shallow cratonic seas, strong magmatic and tectonic activity, and climate moderation. In order to investigate relationships between climate change and marine ecosystem evolution during the Ordovician, we measured the oxygen isotopic composition of single coniform conodonts using a Cameca secondary ion mass spectrometer. Our δ18O profile shows a shift at the Early/Middle Ordovician transition that is indicative of a rapid 6 to 8 °C cooling. This cooling event marks the termination of the Early Ordovician 'super greenhouse' and may have established cooler tropical seawater temperatures that were more favorable for invertebrate animals, setting the stage for the GOBE. Additional cooling episodes occurred during the early Sandbian, early Katian, and Hirnantian, the last culminating in a short-lived (extinction. Our results differ from those of Trotter et al. (2008, 'Did cooling oceans trigger Ordovician biodiversification? Evidence from conodont thermometry,' Science 321:550-554). Instead of a slow, protracted cooling through the Early and Middle Ordovician, our high-resolution record shows that cooling occurred in several discrete steps, with the largest step being at the Early/Middle Ordovician transition.

High-resolution simulation and forecasting of Jeddah floods using WRF version 3.5

KAUST Repository

Deng, Liping

2013-12-01

Modeling flash flood events in arid environments is a difficult but important task that has impacts on both water resource related issues and also emergency management and response. The challenge is often related to adequately describing the precursor intense rainfall events that cause these flood responses, as they are generally poorly simulated and forecast. Jeddah, the second largest city in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has suffered from a number of flash floods over the last decade, following short-intense rainfall events. The research presented here focuses on examining four historic Jeddah flash floods (Nov. 25-26 2009, Dec. 29-30 2010, Jan. 14-15 2011 and Jan. 25-26 2011) and investigates the feasibility of using numerical weather prediction models to achieve a more realistic simulation of these flood-producing rainfall events. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model (version 3.5) is used to simulate precipitation and meteorological conditions via a high-resolution inner domain (1-km) around Jeddah. A range of different convective closure and microphysics parameterization, together with high-resolution (4-km) sea surface temperature data are employed. Through examining comparisons between the WRF model output and in-situ, radar and satellite data, the characteristics and mechanism producing the extreme rainfall events are discussed and the capacity of the WRF model to accurately forecast these rainstorms is evaluated.

High-resolution simulation and forecasting of Jeddah floods using WRF version 3.5

KAUST Repository

Deng, Liping; McCabe, Matthew; Stenchikov, Georgiy L.; Evans, Jason; Kucera, Paul

2013-01-01

Modeling flash flood events in arid environments is a difficult but important task that has impacts on both water resource related issues and also emergency management and response. The challenge is often related to adequately describing the precursor intense rainfall events that cause these flood responses, as they are generally poorly simulated and forecast. Jeddah, the second largest city in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has suffered from a number of flash floods over the last decade, following short-intense rainfall events. The research presented here focuses on examining four historic Jeddah flash floods (Nov. 25-26 2009, Dec. 29-30 2010, Jan. 14-15 2011 and Jan. 25-26 2011) and investigates the feasibility of using numerical weather prediction models to achieve a more realistic simulation of these flood-producing rainfall events. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model (version 3.5) is used to simulate precipitation and meteorological conditions via a high-resolution inner domain (1-km) around Jeddah. A range of different convective closure and microphysics parameterization, together with high-resolution (4-km) sea surface temperature data are employed. Through examining comparisons between the WRF model output and in-situ, radar and satellite data, the characteristics and mechanism producing the extreme rainfall events are discussed and the capacity of the WRF model to accurately forecast these rainstorms is evaluated.

High-resolution dynamic downscaling of CMIP5 output over the Tropical Andes

Science.gov (United States)

Reichler, Thomas; Andrade, Marcos; Ohara, Noriaki

2015-04-01

Our project is targeted towards making robust predictions of future changes in climate over the tropical part of the South American Andes. This goal is challenging, since tropical lowlands, steep mountains, and snow covered subarctic surfaces meet over relatively short distances, leading to distinct climate regimes within the same domain and pronounced spatial gradients in virtually every climate quantity. We use an innovative approach to solve this problem, including several quadruple nested versions of WRF, a systematic validation strategy to find the version of WRF that best fits our study region, spatial resolutions at the kilometer scale, 20-year-long simulation periods, and bias-corrected output from various CMIP5 simulations that also include the multi-model mean of all CMIP5 models. We show that the simulated changes in climate are consistent with the results from the global climate models and also consistent with two different versions of WRF. We also discuss the expected changes in snow and ice, derived from off-line coupling the regional simulations to a carefully calibrated snow and ice model.

Simulating the Agulhas system in global ocean models - nesting vs. multi-resolution unstructured meshes

Science.gov (United States)

Biastoch, Arne; Sein, Dmitry; Durgadoo, Jonathan V.; Wang, Qiang; Danilov, Sergey

2018-01-01

Many questions in ocean and climate modelling require the combined use of high resolution, global coverage and multi-decadal integration length. For this combination, even modern resources limit the use of traditional structured-mesh grids. Here we compare two approaches: A high-resolution grid nested into a global model at coarser resolution (NEMO with AGRIF) and an unstructured-mesh grid (FESOM) which allows to variably enhance resolution where desired. The Agulhas system around South Africa is used as a testcase, providing an energetic interplay of a strong western boundary current and mesoscale dynamics. Its open setting into the horizontal and global overturning circulations also requires global coverage. Both model configurations simulate a reasonable large-scale circulation. Distribution and temporal variability of the wind-driven circulation are quite comparable due to the same atmospheric forcing. However, the overturning circulation differs, owing each model's ability to represent formation and spreading of deep water masses. In terms of regional, high-resolution dynamics, all elements of the Agulhas system are well represented. Owing to the strong nonlinearity in the system, Agulhas Current transports of both configurations and in comparison with observations differ in strength and temporal variability. Similar decadal trends in Agulhas Current transport and Agulhas leakage are linked to the trends in wind forcing.

The AGORA High-resolution Galaxy Simulations Comparison Project

OpenAIRE

Kim Ji-hoon; Abel Tom; Agertz Oscar; Bryan Greg L.; Ceverino Daniel; Christensen Charlotte; Conroy Charlie; Dekel Avishai; Gnedin Nickolay Y.; Goldbaum Nathan J.; Guedes Javiera; Hahn Oliver; Hobbs Alexander; Hopkins Philip F.; Hummels Cameron B.

2014-01-01

The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series 210.1 (2014): 14 reproduced by permission of the AAS We introduce the Assembling Galaxies Of Resolved Anatomy (AGORA) project, a comprehensive numerical study of well-resolved galaxies within the ΛCDM cosmology. Cosmological hydrodynamic simulations with force resolutions of ∼100 proper pc or better will be run with a variety of code platforms to follow the hierarchical growth, star formation history, morphological transformation, and the cycle o...

A 4.5 km resolution Arctic Ocean simulation with the global multi-resolution model FESOM 1.4

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Qiang; Wekerle, Claudia; Danilov, Sergey; Wang, Xuezhu; Jung, Thomas

2018-04-01

In the framework of developing a global modeling system which can facilitate modeling studies on Arctic Ocean and high- to midlatitude linkage, we evaluate the Arctic Ocean simulated by the multi-resolution Finite Element Sea ice-Ocean Model (FESOM). To explore the value of using high horizontal resolution for Arctic Ocean modeling, we use two global meshes differing in the horizontal resolution only in the Arctic Ocean (24 km vs. 4.5 km). The high resolution significantly improves the model's representation of the Arctic Ocean. The most pronounced improvement is in the Arctic intermediate layer, in terms of both Atlantic Water (AW) mean state and variability. The deepening and thickening bias of the AW layer, a common issue found in coarse-resolution simulations, is significantly alleviated by using higher resolution. The topographic steering of the AW is stronger and the seasonal and interannual temperature variability along the ocean bottom topography is enhanced in the high-resolution simulation. The high resolution also improves the ocean surface circulation, mainly through a better representation of the narrow straits in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA). The representation of CAA throughflow not only influences the release of water masses through the other gateways but also the circulation pathways inside the Arctic Ocean. However, the mean state and variability of Arctic freshwater content and the variability of freshwater transport through the Arctic gateways appear not to be very sensitive to the increase in resolution employed here. By highlighting the issues that are independent of model resolution, we address that other efforts including the improvement of parameterizations are still required.

APPLICABILITY OF VARIOUS INTERPOLATION APPROACHES FOR HIGH RESOLUTION SPATIAL MAPPING OF CLIMATE DATA IN KOREA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A. Jo

2018-04-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this study is to create a new dataset of spatially interpolated monthly climate data for South Korea at high spatial resolution (approximately 30m by performing various spatio-statistical interpolation and comparing with forecast LDAPS gridded climate data provided from Korea Meterological Administration (KMA. Automatic Weather System (AWS and Automated Synoptic Observing System (ASOS data in 2017 obtained from KMA were included for the spatial mapping of temperature and rainfall; instantaneous temperature and 1-hour accumulated precipitation at 09:00 am on 31th March, 21th June, 23th September, and 24th December. Among observation data, 80 percent of the total point (478 and remaining 120 points were used for interpolations and for quantification, respectively. With the training data and digital elevation model (DEM with 30 m resolution, inverse distance weighting (IDW, co-kriging, and kriging were performed by using ArcGIS10.3.1 software and Python 3.6.4. Bias and root mean square were computed to compare prediction performance quantitatively. When statistical analysis was performed for each cluster using 20 % validation data, co kriging was more suitable for spatialization of instantaneous temperature than other interpolation method. On the other hand, IDW technique was appropriate for spatialization of precipitation.

A comparison of high-resolution pollen-inferred climate data from central Minnesota, USA, to 19th century US military fort climate data and tree-ring inferred climate reconstructions

Science.gov (United States)

St Jacques, J.; Cumming, B. F.; Sauchyn, D.; Vanstone, J. R.; Dickenson, J.; Smol, J. P.

2013-12-01

A vital component of paleoclimatology is the validation of paleoclimatological reconstructions. Unfortunately, there is scant instrumental data prior to the 20th century available for this. Hence, typically, we can only do long-term validation using other proxy-inferred climate reconstructions. Minnesota, USA, with its long military fort climate records beginning in 1820 and early dense network of climate stations, offers a rare opportunity for proxy validation. We compare a high-resolution (4-year), millennium-scale, pollen-inferred paleoclimate record derived from varved Lake Mina in central Minnesota to early military fort records and dendroclimatological records. When inferring a paleoclimate record from a pollen record, we rely upon the pollen-climate relationship being constant in time. However, massive human impacts have significantly altered vegetation; and the relationship between modern instrumental climate data and the modern pollen rain becomes altered from what it was in the past. In the Midwest, selective logging, fire suppression, deforestation and agriculture have strongly influenced the modern pollen rain since Euro-American settlement in the mid-1800s. We assess the signal distortion introduced by using the conventional method of modern post-settlement pollen and climate calibration sets to infer climate at Lake Mina from pre-settlement pollen data. Our first February and May temperature reconstructions are based on a pollen dataset contemporaneous with early settlement to which corresponding climate data from the earliest instrumental records has been added to produce a 'pre-settlement' calibration set. The second February and May temperature reconstructions are based on a conventional 'modern' pollen-climate dataset from core-top pollen samples and modern climate normals. The temperature reconstructions are then compared to the earliest instrumental records from Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and it is shown that the reconstructions based on the pre

Heat waves over Central Europe in regional climate model simulations

Science.gov (United States)

Lhotka, Ondřej; Kyselý, Jan

2014-05-01

Regional climate models (RCMs) have become a powerful tool for exploring impacts of global climate change on a regional scale. The aim of the study is to evaluate the capability of RCMs to reproduce characteristics of major heat waves over Central Europe in their simulations of the recent climate (1961-2000), with a focus on the most severe and longest Central European heat wave that occurred in 1994. We analyzed 7 RCM simulations with a high resolution (0.22°) from the ENSEMBLES project, driven by the ERA-40 reanalysis. In observed data (the E-OBS 9.0 dataset), heat waves were defined on the basis of deviations of daily maximum temperature (Tmax) from the 95% quantile of summer Tmax distribution in grid points over Central Europe. The same methodology was applied in the RCM simulations; we used corresponding 95% quantiles (calculated for each RCM and grid point) in order to remove the bias of modelled Tmax. While climatological characteristics of heat waves are reproduced reasonably well in the RCM ensemble, we found major deficiencies in simulating heat waves in individual years. For example, METNOHIRHAM simulated very severe heat waves in 1996, when no heat wave was observed. Focusing on the major 1994 heat wave, considerable differences in simulated temperature patterns were found among the RCMs. The differences in the temperature patterns were clearly linked to the simulated amount of precipitation during this event. The 1994 heat wave was almost absent in all RCMs that did not capture the observed precipitation deficit, while it was by far most pronounced in KNMI-RACMO that simulated virtually no precipitation over Central Europe during the 15-day period of the heat wave. By contrast to precipitation, values of evaporative fraction in the RCMs were not linked to severity of the simulated 1994 heat wave. This suggests a possible major contribution of other factors such as cloud cover and associated downward shortwave radiation. Therefore, a more detailed

THE AGORA HIGH-RESOLUTION GALAXY SIMULATIONS COMPARISON PROJECT. II. ISOLATED DISK TEST

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kim, Ji-hoon [Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA 94025 (United States); Agertz, Oscar [Department of Physics, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH (United Kingdom); Teyssier, Romain; Feldmann, Robert [Centre for Theoretical Astrophysics and Cosmology, Institute for Computational Science, University of Zurich, Zurich, 8057 (Switzerland); Butler, Michael J. [Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, D-69117 Heidelberg (Germany); Ceverino, Daniel [Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Institut für Theoretische Astrophysik, D-69120 Heidelberg (Germany); Choi, Jun-Hwan [Department of Astronomy, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712 (United States); Keller, Ben W. [Department of Physics and Astronomy, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4M1 (Canada); Lupi, Alessandro [Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, Sorbonne Universites, UPMC Univ Paris 6 et CNRS, F-75014 Paris (France); Quinn, Thomas; Wallace, Spencer [Department of Astronomy, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 (United States); Revaz, Yves [Institute of Physics, Laboratoire d’Astrophysique, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne (Switzerland); Gnedin, Nickolay Y. [Particle Astrophysics Center, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, IL 60510 (United States); Leitner, Samuel N. [Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 (United States); Shen, Sijing [Kavli Institute for Cosmology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB3 0HA (United Kingdom); Smith, Britton D., E-mail: me@jihoonkim.org [Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Royal Observatory, Edinburgh EH9 3HJ (United Kingdom); Collaboration: AGORA Collaboration; and others

2016-12-20

Using an isolated Milky Way-mass galaxy simulation, we compare results from nine state-of-the-art gravito-hydrodynamics codes widely used in the numerical community. We utilize the infrastructure we have built for the AGORA High-resolution Galaxy Simulations Comparison Project. This includes the common disk initial conditions, common physics models (e.g., radiative cooling and UV background by the standardized package Grackle) and common analysis toolkit yt, all of which are publicly available. Subgrid physics models such as Jeans pressure floor, star formation, supernova feedback energy, and metal production are carefully constrained across code platforms. With numerical accuracy that resolves the disk scale height, we find that the codes overall agree well with one another in many dimensions including: gas and stellar surface densities, rotation curves, velocity dispersions, density and temperature distribution functions, disk vertical heights, stellar clumps, star formation rates, and Kennicutt–Schmidt relations. Quantities such as velocity dispersions are very robust (agreement within a few tens of percent at all radii) while measures like newly formed stellar clump mass functions show more significant variation (difference by up to a factor of ∼3). Systematic differences exist, for example, between mesh-based and particle-based codes in the low-density region, and between more diffusive and less diffusive schemes in the high-density tail of the density distribution. Yet intrinsic code differences are generally small compared to the variations in numerical implementations of the common subgrid physics such as supernova feedback. Our experiment reassures that, if adequately designed in accordance with our proposed common parameters, results of a modern high-resolution galaxy formation simulation are more sensitive to input physics than to intrinsic differences in numerical schemes.

Climate changes over the past millennium: Relationships with Mediterranean climates

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Mann, M.E.

2006-01-01

Evidence is reviewed for climate change and its causes over the interval spanning roughly the past millennium. Particular emphasis is placed on patterns of climate change influencing Mediterranean climates of the Northern Hemisphere. The evidence is taken from studies using high-resolution climate proxy data sources, and climate modeling simulations. The available evidence suggests that forced changes in dynamical modes of variability including the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) have played a key role in the patterns of climate variability in Mediterranean regions over the past millennium

Response of precipitation extremes to idealized global warming in an aqua-planet climate model: Towards robust projection across different horizontal resolutions

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Li, F.; Collins, W.D.; Wehner, M.F.; Williamson, D.L.; Olson, J.G.

2011-04-15

Current climate models produce quite heterogeneous projections for the responses of precipitation extremes to future climate change. To help understand the range of projections from multimodel ensembles, a series of idealized 'aquaplanet' Atmospheric General Circulation Model (AGCM) runs have been performed with the Community Atmosphere Model CAM3. These runs have been analysed to identify the effects of horizontal resolution on precipitation extreme projections under two simple global warming scenarios. We adopt the aquaplanet framework for our simulations to remove any sensitivity to the spatial resolution of external inputs and to focus on the roles of model physics and dynamics. Results show that a uniform increase of sea surface temperature (SST) and an increase of low-to-high latitude SST gradient both lead to increase of precipitation and precipitation extremes for most latitudes. The perturbed SSTs generally have stronger impacts on precipitation extremes than on mean precipitation. Horizontal model resolution strongly affects the global warming signals in the extreme precipitation in tropical and subtropical regions but not in high latitude regions. This study illustrates that the effects of horizontal resolution have to be taken into account to develop more robust projections of precipitation extremes.

The influence of spatial resolution on human health risk co-benefit estimates for global climate policy assessments.

Science.gov (United States)

Shih, Hsiu-Ching; Crawford-Brown, Douglas; Ma, Hwong-wen

2015-03-15

Assessment of the ability of climate policies to produce desired improvements in public health through co-benefits of air pollution reduction can consume resources in both time and research funds. These resources increase significantly as the spatial resolution of models increases. In addition, the level of spatial detail available in macroeconomic models at the heart of climate policy assessments is much lower than that available in traditional human health risk modeling. It is therefore important to determine whether increasing spatial resolution considerably affects risk-based decisions; which kinds of decisions might be affected; and under what conditions they will be affected. Human health risk co-benefits from carbon emissions reductions that bring about concurrent reductions in Particulate Matter (PM10) emissions is therefore examined here at four levels of spatial resolution (Uniform Nation, Uniform Region, Uniform County/city, Health Risk Assessment) in a case study of Taiwan as one of the geographic regions of a global macroeceonomic model, with results that are representative of small, industrialized nations within that global model. A metric of human health risk mortality (YOLL, years of life lost in life expectancy) is compared under assessments ranging from a "uniform simulation" in which there is no spatial resolution of changes in ambient air concentration under a policy to a "highly spatially resolved simulation" (called here Health Risk Assessment). PM10 is chosen in this study as the indicator of air pollution for which risks are assessed due to its significance as a co-benefit of carbon emissions reductions within climate mitigation policy. For the policy examined, the four estimates of mortality in the entirety of Taiwan are 747 YOLL, 834 YOLL, 984 YOLL and 916 YOLL, under Uniform Taiwan, Uniform Region, Uniform County and Health Risk Assessment respectively; or differences of 18%, 9%, 7% if the HRA methodology is taken as the baseline. While

Interactive Correlation Analysis and Visualization of Climate Data

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ma, Kwan-Liu [Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States)

2016-09-21

The relationship between our ability to analyze and extract insights from visualization of climate model output and the capability of the available resources to make those visualizations has reached a crisis point. The large volume of data currently produced by climate models is overwhelming the current, decades-old visualization workflow. The traditional methods for visualizing climate output also have not kept pace with changes in the types of grids used, the number of variables involved, and the number of different simulations performed with a climate model or the feature-richness of high-resolution simulations. This project has developed new and faster methods for visualization in order to get the most knowledge out of the new generation of high-resolution climate models. While traditional climate images will continue to be useful, there is need for new approaches to visualization and analysis of climate data if we are to gain all the insights available in ultra-large data sets produced by high-resolution model output and ensemble integrations of climate models such as those produced for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. Towards that end, we have developed new visualization techniques for performing correlation analysis. We have also introduced highly scalable, parallel rendering methods for visualizing large-scale 3D data. This project was done jointly with climate scientists and visualization researchers at Argonne National Laboratory and NCAR.

Tests of high-resolution simulations over a region of complex terrain in Southeast coast of Brazil

Science.gov (United States)

Chou, Sin Chan; Luís Gomes, Jorge; Ristic, Ivan; Mesinger, Fedor; Sueiro, Gustavo; Andrade, Diego; Lima-e-Silva, Pedro Paulo

2013-04-01

The Eta Model is used operationally by INPE at the Centre for Weather Forecasts and Climate Studies (CPTEC) to produce weather forecasts over South America since 1997. The model has gone through upgrades along these years. In order to prepare the model for operational higher resolution forecasts, the model is configured and tested over a region of complex topography located near the coast of Southeast Brazil. The model domain includes the two Brazilians cities, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, urban areas, preserved tropical forest, pasture fields, and complex terrain where it can rise from sea level up to about 1000 m. Accurate near-surface wind direction and magnitude are needed for the power plant emergency plan. Besides, the region suffers from frequent events of floods and landslides, therefore accurate local forecasts are required for disaster warnings. The objective of this work is to carry out a series of numerical experiments to test and evaluate high resolution simulations in this complex area. Verification of model runs uses observations taken from the nuclear power plant and higher resolution reanalyses data. The runs were tested in a period when flow was predominately forced by local conditions and in a period forced by frontal passage. The Eta Model was configured initially with 2-km horizontal resolution and 50 layers. The Eta-2km is a second nesting, it is driven by Eta-15km, which in its turn is driven by Era-Interim reanalyses. The series of experiments consists of replacing surface layer stability function, adjusting cloud microphysics scheme parameters, further increasing vertical and horizontal resolutions. By replacing the stability function for the stable conditions substantially increased the katabatic winds and verified better against the tower wind data. Precipitation produced by the model was excessive in the region. Increasing vertical resolution to 60 layers caused a further increase in precipitation production. This excessive

High-resolution stochastic generation of extreme rainfall intensity for urban drainage modelling applications

Science.gov (United States)

Peleg, Nadav; Blumensaat, Frank; Molnar, Peter; Fatichi, Simone; Burlando, Paolo

2016-04-01

Urban drainage response is highly dependent on the spatial and temporal structure of rainfall. Therefore, measuring and simulating rainfall at a high spatial and temporal resolution is a fundamental step to fully assess urban drainage system reliability and related uncertainties. This is even more relevant when considering extreme rainfall events. However, the current space-time rainfall models have limitations in capturing extreme rainfall intensity statistics for short durations. Here, we use the STREAP (Space-Time Realizations of Areal Precipitation) model, which is a novel stochastic rainfall generator for simulating high-resolution rainfall fields that preserve the spatio-temporal structure of rainfall and its statistical characteristics. The model enables a generation of rain fields at 102 m and minute scales in a fast and computer-efficient way matching the requirements for hydrological analysis of urban drainage systems. The STREAP model was applied successfully in the past to generate high-resolution extreme rainfall intensities over a small domain. A sub-catchment in the city of Luzern (Switzerland) was chosen as a case study to: (i) evaluate the ability of STREAP to disaggregate extreme rainfall intensities for urban drainage applications; (ii) assessing the role of stochastic climate variability of rainfall in flow response and (iii) evaluate the degree of non-linearity between extreme rainfall intensity and system response (i.e. flow) for a small urban catchment. The channel flow at the catchment outlet is simulated by means of a calibrated hydrodynamic sewer model.

Assessment of summer rainfall forecast skill in the Intra-Americas in GFDL high and low-resolution models

Science.gov (United States)

Krishnamurthy, Lakshmi; Muñoz, Ángel G.; Vecchi, Gabriel A.; Msadek, Rym; Wittenberg, Andrew T.; Stern, Bill; Gudgel, Rich; Zeng, Fanrong

2018-05-01

The Caribbean low-level jet (CLLJ) is an important component of the atmospheric circulation over the Intra-Americas Sea (IAS) which impacts the weather and climate both locally and remotely. It influences the rainfall variability in the Caribbean, Central America, northern South America, the tropical Pacific and the continental Unites States through the transport of moisture. We make use of high-resolution coupled and uncoupled models from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) to investigate the simulation of the CLLJ and its teleconnections and further compare with low-resolution models. The high-resolution coupled model FLOR shows improvements in the simulation of the CLLJ and its teleconnections with rainfall and SST over the IAS compared to the low-resolution coupled model CM2.1. The CLLJ is better represented in uncoupled models (AM2.1 and AM2.5) forced with observed sea-surface temperatures (SSTs), emphasizing the role of SSTs in the simulation of the CLLJ. Further, we determine the forecast skill for observed rainfall using both high- and low-resolution predictions of rainfall and SSTs for the July-August-September season. We determine the role of statistical correction of model biases, coupling and horizontal resolution on the forecast skill. Statistical correction dramatically improves area-averaged forecast skill. But the analysis of spatial distribution in skill indicates that the improvement in skill after statistical correction is region dependent. Forecast skill is sensitive to coupling in parts of the Caribbean, Central and northern South America, and it is mostly insensitive over North America. Comparison of forecast skill between high and low-resolution coupled models does not show any dramatic difference. However, uncoupled models show improvement in the area-averaged skill in the high-resolution atmospheric model compared to lower resolution model. Understanding and improving the forecast skill over the IAS has important implications

Current climate and climate change over India as simulated by the Canadian Regional Climate Model

Science.gov (United States)

Alexandru, Adelina; Sushama, Laxmi

2015-08-01

The performance of the fifth generation of the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM5) in reproducing the main climatic characteristics over India during the southwest (SW)-, post- and pre-monsoon seasons are presented in this article. To assess the performance of CRCM5, European Centre for Medium- Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Re- Analysis (ERA- 40) and Interim re-analysis (ERA-Interim) driven CRCM5 simulation is compared against independent observations and reanalysis data for the 1971-2000 period. Projected changes for two future periods, 2041-2070 and 2071-2100, with respect to the 1971-2000 current period are assessed based on two transient climate change simulations of CRCM5 spanning the 1950-2100 period. These two simulations are driven by the Canadian Earth System Model version 2 (CanESM2) and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology's Earth System Low Resolution Model (MPI-ESM-LR), respectively. The boundary forcing errors associated with errors in the driving global climate models are also studied by comparing the 1971-2000 period of the CanESM2 and MPI-ESM-LR driven simulations with that of the CRCM5 simulation driven by ERA-40/ERA-Interim. Results show that CRCM5 driven by ERA-40/ERA-Interim is in general able to capture well the temporal and spatial patterns of 2 m-temperature, precipitation, wind, sea level pressure, total runoff and soil moisture over India in comparison with available reanalysis and observations. However, some noticeable differences between the model and observational data were found during the SW-monsoon season within the domain of integration. CRCM5 driven by ERA-40/ERA-Interim is 1-2 °C colder than CRU observations and generates more precipitation over the Western Ghats and central regions of India, and not enough in the northern and north-eastern parts of India and along the Konkan west coast in comparison with the observed precipitation. The monsoon onset seems to be relatively well captured over the southwestern coast of

Sensitivity of U.S. summer precipitation to model resolution and convective parameterizations across gray zone resolutions

Science.gov (United States)

Gao, Yang; Leung, L. Ruby; Zhao, Chun; Hagos, Samson

2017-03-01

Simulating summer precipitation is a significant challenge for climate models that rely on cumulus parameterizations to represent moist convection processes. Motivated by recent advances in computing that support very high-resolution modeling, this study aims to systematically evaluate the effects of model resolution and convective parameterizations across the gray zone resolutions. Simulations using the Weather Research and Forecasting model were conducted at grid spacings of 36 km, 12 km, and 4 km for two summers over the conterminous U.S. The convection-permitting simulations at 4 km grid spacing are most skillful in reproducing the observed precipitation spatial distributions and diurnal variability. Notable differences are found between simulations with the traditional Kain-Fritsch (KF) and the scale-aware Grell-Freitas (GF) convection schemes, with the latter more skillful in capturing the nocturnal timing in the Great Plains and North American monsoon regions. The GF scheme also simulates a smoother transition from convective to large-scale precipitation as resolution increases, resulting in reduced sensitivity to model resolution compared to the KF scheme. Nonhydrostatic dynamics has a positive impact on precipitation over complex terrain even at 12 km and 36 km grid spacings. With nudging of the winds toward observations, we show that the conspicuous warm biases in the Southern Great Plains are related to precipitation biases induced by large-scale circulation biases, which are insensitive to model resolution. Overall, notable improvements in simulating summer rainfall and its diurnal variability through convection-permitting modeling and scale-aware parameterizations suggest promising venues for improving climate simulations of water cycle processes.

High-resolution Hydrodynamic Simulation of Tidal Detonation of a Helium White Dwarf by an Intermediate Mass Black Hole

Science.gov (United States)

Tanikawa, Ataru

2018-05-01

We demonstrate tidal detonation during a tidal disruption event (TDE) of a helium (He) white dwarf (WD) with 0.45 M ⊙ by an intermediate mass black hole using extremely high-resolution simulations. Tanikawa et al. have shown tidal detonation in results of previous studies from unphysical heating due to low-resolution simulations, and such unphysical heating occurs in three-dimensional (3D) smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations even with 10 million SPH particles. In order to avoid such unphysical heating, we perform 3D SPH simulations up to 300 million SPH particles, and 1D mesh simulations using flow structure in the 3D SPH simulations for 1D initial conditions. The 1D mesh simulations have higher resolutions than the 3D SPH simulations. We show that tidal detonation occurs and confirm that this result is perfectly converged with different space resolution in both 3D SPH and 1D mesh simulations. We find that detonation waves independently arise in leading parts of the WD, and yield large amounts of 56Ni. Although detonation waves are not generated in trailing parts of the WD, the trailing parts would receive detonation waves generated in the leading parts and would leave large amounts of Si group elements. Eventually, this He WD TDE would synthesize 56Ni of 0.30 M ⊙ and Si group elements of 0.08 M ⊙, and could be observed as a luminous thermonuclear transient comparable to SNe Ia.

NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) Presentation

Science.gov (United States)

Webster, William P.

2012-01-01

The NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) offers integrated supercomputing, visualization, and data interaction technologies to enhance NASA's weather and climate prediction capabilities. It serves hundreds of users at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, as well as other NASA centers, laboratories, and universities across the US. Over the past year, NCCS has continued expanding its data-centric computing environment to meet the increasingly data-intensive challenges of climate science. We doubled our Discover supercomputer's peak performance to more than 800 teraflops by adding 7,680 Intel Xeon Sandy Bridge processor-cores and most recently 240 Intel Xeon Phi Many Integrated Core (MIG) co-processors. A supercomputing-class analysis system named Dali gives users rapid access to their data on Discover and high-performance software including the Ultra-scale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools (UV-CDAT), with interfaces from user desktops and a 17- by 6-foot visualization wall. NCCS also is exploring highly efficient climate data services and management with a new MapReduce/Hadoop cluster while augmenting its data distribution to the science community. Using NCCS resources, NASA completed its modeling contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCG) Fifth Assessment Report this summer as part of the ongoing Coupled Modellntercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). Ensembles of simulations run on Discover reached back to the year 1000 to test model accuracy and projected climate change through the year 2300 based on four different scenarios of greenhouse gases, aerosols, and land use. The data resulting from several thousand IPCC/CMIP5 simulations, as well as a variety of other simulation, reanalysis, and observationdatasets, are available to scientists and decision makers through an enhanced NCCS Earth System Grid Federation Gateway. Worldwide downloads have totaled over 110 terabytes of data.

Simulated trends of extreme climate indices for the Carpathian basin using outputs of different regional climate models

Science.gov (United States)

Pongracz, R.; Bartholy, J.; Szabo, P.; Pieczka, I.; Torma, C. S.

2009-04-01

Regional climatological effects of global warming may be recognized not only in shifts of mean temperature and precipitation, but in the frequency or intensity changes of different climate extremes. Several climate extreme indices are analyzed and compared for the Carpathian basin (located in Central/Eastern Europe) following the guidelines suggested by the joint WMO-CCl/CLIVAR Working Group on climate change detection. Our statistical trend analysis includes the evaluation of several extreme temperature and precipitation indices, e.g., the numbers of severe cold days, winter days, frost days, cold days, warm days, summer days, hot days, extremely hot days, cold nights, warm nights, the intra-annual extreme temperature range, the heat wave duration, the growing season length, the number of wet days (using several threshold values defining extremes), the maximum number of consecutive dry days, the highest 1-day precipitation amount, the greatest 5-day rainfall total, the annual fraction due to extreme precipitation events, etc. In order to evaluate the future trends (2071-2100) in the Carpathian basin, daily values of meteorological variables are obtained from the outputs of various regional climate model (RCM) experiments accomplished in the frame of the completed EU-project PRUDENCE (Prediction of Regional scenarios and Uncertainties for Defining EuropeaN Climate change risks and Effects). Horizontal resolution of the applied RCMs is 50 km. Both scenarios A2 and B2 are used to compare past and future trends of the extreme climate indices for the Carpathian basin. Furthermore, fine-resolution climate experiments of two additional RCMs adapted and run at the Department of Meteorology, Eotvos Lorand University are used to extend the trend analysis of climate extremes for the Carpathian basin. (1) Model PRECIS (run at 25 km horizontal resolution) was developed at the UK Met Office, Hadley Centre, and it uses the boundary conditions from the HadCM3 GCM. (2) Model Reg

STAMMEX high resolution gridded daily precipitation dataset over Germany: a new potential for regional precipitation climate research

Science.gov (United States)

Zolina, Olga; Simmer, Clemens; Kapala, Alice; Mächel, Hermann; Gulev, Sergey; Groisman, Pavel

2014-05-01

We present new high resolution precipitation daily grids developed at Meteorological Institute, University of Bonn and German Weather Service (DWD) under the STAMMEX project (Spatial and Temporal Scales and Mechanisms of Extreme Precipitation Events over Central Europe). Daily precipitation grids have been developed from the daily-observing precipitation network of DWD, which runs one of the World's densest rain gauge networks comprising more than 7500 stations. Several quality-controlled daily gridded products with homogenized sampling were developed covering the periods 1931-onwards (with 0.5 degree resolution), 1951-onwards (0.25 degree and 0.5 degree), and 1971-2000 (0.1 degree). Different methods were tested to select the best gridding methodology that minimizes errors of integral grid estimates over hilly terrain. Besides daily precipitation values with uncertainty estimates (which include standard estimates of the kriging uncertainty as well as error estimates derived by a bootstrapping algorithm), the STAMMEX data sets include a variety of statistics that characterize temporal and spatial dynamics of the precipitation distribution (quantiles, extremes, wet/dry spells, etc.). Comparisons with existing continental-scale daily precipitation grids (e.g., CRU, ECA E-OBS, GCOS) which include considerably less observations compared to those used in STAMMEX, demonstrate the added value of high-resolution grids for extreme rainfall analyses. These data exhibit spatial variability pattern and trends in precipitation extremes, which are missed or incorrectly reproduced over Central Europe from coarser resolution grids based on sparser networks. The STAMMEX dataset can be used for high-quality climate diagnostics of precipitation variability, as a reference for reanalyses and remotely-sensed precipitation products (including the upcoming Global Precipitation Mission products), and for input into regional climate and operational weather forecast models. We will present

The simulation of a data acquisition system for a proposed high resolution PET scanner

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Rotolo, C.; Larwill, M.; Chappa, S. [Fermi National Accelerator Lab., Batavia, IL (United States); Ordonez, C. [Chicago Univ., IL (United States)

1993-10-01

The simulation of a specific data acquisition (DAQ) system architecture for a proposed high resolution Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner is discussed. Stochastic processes are used extensively to model PET scanner signal timing and probable DAQ circuit limitations. Certain architectural parameters, along with stochastic parameters, are varied to quantatively study the resulting output under various conditions. The inclusion of the DAQ in the model represents a novel method of more complete simulations of tomograph designs, and could prove to be of pivotal importance in the optimization of such designs.

The simulation of a data acquisition system for a proposed high resolution PET scanner

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rotolo, C.; Larwill, M.; Chappa, S.; Ordonez, C.

1993-10-01

The simulation of a specific data acquisition (DAQ) system architecture for a proposed high resolution Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner is discussed. Stochastic processes are used extensively to model PET scanner signal timing and probable DAQ circuit limitations. Certain architectural parameters, along with stochastic parameters, are varied to quantatively study the resulting output under various conditions. The inclusion of the DAQ in the model represents a novel method of more complete simulations of tomograph designs, and could prove to be of pivotal importance in the optimization of such designs

SAGA GIS based processing of spatial high resolution temperature data

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gerlitz, Lars; Bechtel, Benjamin; Kawohl, Tobias; Boehner, Juergen; Zaksek, Klemen

2013-01-01

Many climate change impact studies require surface and near surface temperature data with high spatial and temporal resolution. The resolution of state of the art climate models and remote sensing data is often by far to coarse to represent the meso- and microscale distinctions of temperatures. This is particularly the case for regions with a huge variability of topoclimates, such as mountainous or urban areas. Statistical downscaling techniques are promising methods to refine gridded temperature data with limited spatial resolution, particularly due to their low demand for computer capacity. This paper presents two downscaling approaches - one for climate model output and one for remote sensing data. Both are methodically based on the FOSS-GIS platform SAGA. (orig.)

Quality and sensitivity of high-resolution numerical simulation of urban heat islands

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Dan; Bou-Zeid, Elie

2014-05-01

High-resolution numerical simulations of the urban heat island (UHI) effect with the widely-used Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model are assessed. Both the sensitivity of the results to the simulation setup, and the quality of the simulated fields as representations of the real world, are investigated. Results indicate that the WRF-simulated surface temperatures are more sensitive to the planetary boundary layer (PBL) scheme choice during nighttime, and more sensitive to the surface thermal roughness length parameterization during daytime. The urban surface temperatures simulated by WRF are also highly sensitive to the urban canopy model (UCM) used. The implementation in this study of an improved UCM (the Princeton UCM or PUCM) that allows the simulation of heterogeneous urban facets and of key hydrological processes, together with the so-called CZ09 parameterization for the thermal roughness length, significantly reduce the bias (Changing UCMs and PBL schemes does not alter the performance of WRF in reproducing bulk boundary layer temperature profiles significantly. The results illustrate the wide range of urban environmental conditions that various configurations of WRF can produce, and the significant biases that should be assessed before inferences are made based on WRF outputs. The optimal set-up of WRF-PUCM developed in this paper also paves the way for a confident exploration of the city-scale impacts of UHI mitigation strategies in the companion paper (Li et al 2014).

A synthesis of regional climate change simulations - A Scandinavian perspective

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Christensen, J. H.; Räinsänen, J.; Iversen, T.

2001-01-01

Four downscaling experiments of regional climate change for the Nordic countries have been conducted with three different regional climate models (RCMs). A short synthesis of the outcome of the suite of experiments is presented as an ensemble, reflecting the different driving atmosphere-ocean...... general circulation model (AOGCM) conditions, RCM model resolution and domain size, and choice of emission scenarios. This allows the sources of uncertainties in the projections to be assessed. At the same time analysis of the climate change signal for temperature and precipitation over the period 1990......-2050 reveals strong similarities. In particular, all experiments in the suite simulate changes in the precipitation distribution towards a higher frequency of heavy precipitation....

Use of High-Resolution WRF Simulations to Forecast Lightning Threat

Science.gov (United States)

McCaul, E. W., Jr.; LaCasse, K.; Goodman, S. J.; Cecil, D. J.

2008-01-01

Recent observational studies have confirmed the existence of a robust statistical relationship between lightning flash rates and the amount of large precipitating ice hydrometeors aloft in storms. This relationship is exploited, in conjunction with the capabilities of cloud-resolving forecast models such as WRF, to forecast explicitly the threat of lightning from convective storms using selected output fields from the model forecasts. The simulated vertical flux of graupel at -15C and the shape of the simulated reflectivity profile are tested in this study as proxies for charge separation processes and their associated lightning risk. Our lightning forecast method differs from others in that it is entirely based on high-resolution simulation output, without reliance on any climatological data. short [6-8 h) simulations are conducted for a number of case studies for which three-dmmensional lightning validation data from the North Alabama Lightning Mapping Array are available. Experiments indicate that initialization of the WRF model on a 2 km grid using Eta boundary conditions, Doppler radar radial velocity fields, and METAR and ACARS data y&eld satisfactory simulations. __nalyses of the lightning threat fields suggests that both the graupel flux and reflectivity profile approaches, when properly calibrated, can yield reasonable lightning threat forecasts, although an ensemble approach is probably desirable in order to reduce the tendency for misplacement of modeled storms to hurt the accuracy of the forecasts. Our lightning threat forecasts are also compared to other more traditional means of forecasting thunderstorms, such as those based on inspection of the convective available potential energy field.

Low-resolution simulations of vesicle suspensions in 2D

Science.gov (United States)

Kabacaoğlu, Gökberk; Quaife, Bryan; Biros, George

2018-03-01

Vesicle suspensions appear in many biological and industrial applications. These suspensions are characterized by rich and complex dynamics of vesicles due to their interaction with the bulk fluid, and their large deformations and nonlinear elastic properties. Many existing state-of-the-art numerical schemes can resolve such complex vesicle flows. However, even when using provably optimal algorithms, these simulations can be computationally expensive, especially for suspensions with a large number of vesicles. These high computational costs can limit the use of simulations for parameter exploration, optimization, or uncertainty quantification. One way to reduce the cost is to use low-resolution discretizations in space and time. However, it is well-known that simply reducing the resolution results in vesicle collisions, numerical instabilities, and often in erroneous results. In this paper, we investigate the effect of a number of algorithmic empirical fixes (which are commonly used by many groups) in an attempt to make low-resolution simulations more stable and more predictive. Based on our empirical studies for a number of flow configurations, we propose a scheme that attempts to integrate these fixes in a systematic way. This low-resolution scheme is an extension of our previous work [51,53]. Our low-resolution correction algorithms (LRCA) include anti-aliasing and membrane reparametrization for avoiding spurious oscillations in vesicles' membranes, adaptive time stepping and a repulsion force for handling vesicle collisions and, correction of vesicles' area and arc-length for maintaining physical vesicle shapes. We perform a systematic error analysis by comparing the low-resolution simulations of dilute and dense suspensions with their high-fidelity, fully resolved, counterparts. We observe that the LRCA enables both efficient and statistically accurate low-resolution simulations of vesicle suspensions, while it can be 10× to 100× faster.

Toolbox for Urban Mobility Simulation: High Resolution Population Dynamics for Global Cities

Science.gov (United States)

Bhaduri, B. L.; Lu, W.; Liu, C.; Thakur, G.; Karthik, R.

2015-12-01

In this rapidly urbanizing world, unprecedented rate of population growth is not only mirrored by increasing demand for energy, food, water, and other natural resources, but has detrimental impacts on environmental and human security. Transportation simulations are frequently used for mobility assessment in urban planning, traffic operation, and emergency management. Previous research, involving purely analytical techniques to simulations capturing behavior, has investigated questions and scenarios regarding the relationships among energy, emissions, air quality, and transportation. Primary limitations of past attempts have been availability of input data, useful "energy and behavior focused" models, validation data, and adequate computational capability that allows adequate understanding of the interdependencies of our transportation system. With increasing availability and quality of traditional and crowdsourced data, we have utilized the OpenStreetMap roads network, and has integrated high resolution population data with traffic simulation to create a Toolbox for Urban Mobility Simulations (TUMS) at global scale. TUMS consists of three major components: data processing, traffic simulation models, and Internet-based visualizations. It integrates OpenStreetMap, LandScanTM population, and other open data (Census Transportation Planning Products, National household Travel Survey, etc.) to generate both normal traffic operation and emergency evacuation scenarios. TUMS integrates TRANSIMS and MITSIM as traffic simulation engines, which are open-source and widely-accepted for scalable traffic simulations. Consistent data and simulation platform allows quick adaption to various geographic areas that has been demonstrated for multiple cities across the world. We are combining the strengths of geospatial data sciences, high performance simulations, transportation planning, and emissions, vehicle and energy technology development to design and develop a simulation

Mediterranean Thermohaline Response to Large-Scale Winter Atmospheric Forcing in a High-Resolution Ocean Model Simulation

Science.gov (United States)

Cusinato, Eleonora; Zanchettin, Davide; Sannino, Gianmaria; Rubino, Angelo

2018-04-01

Large-scale circulation anomalies over the North Atlantic and Euro-Mediterranean regions described by dominant climate modes, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the East Atlantic pattern (EA), the East Atlantic/Western Russian (EAWR) and the Mediterranean Oscillation Index (MOI), significantly affect interannual-to-decadal climatic and hydroclimatic variability in the Euro-Mediterranean region. However, whereas previous studies assessed the impact of such climate modes on air-sea heat and freshwater fluxes in the Mediterranean Sea, the propagation of these atmospheric forcing signals from the surface toward the interior and the abyss of the Mediterranean Sea remains unexplored. Here, we use a high-resolution ocean model simulation covering the 1979-2013 period to investigate spatial patterns and time scales of the Mediterranean thermohaline response to winter forcing from NAO, EA, EAWR and MOI. We find that these modes significantly imprint on the thermohaline properties in key areas of the Mediterranean Sea through a variety of mechanisms. Typically, density anomalies induced by all modes remain confined in the upper 600 m depth and remain significant for up to 18-24 months. One of the clearest propagation signals refers to the EA in the Adriatic and northern Ionian seas: There, negative EA anomalies are associated to an extensive positive density response, with anomalies that sink to the bottom of the South Adriatic Pit within a 2-year time. Other strong responses are the thermally driven responses to the EA in the Gulf of Lions and to the EAWR in the Aegean Sea. MOI and EAWR forcing of thermohaline properties in the Eastern Mediterranean sub-basins seems to be determined by reinforcement processes linked to the persistency of these modes in multiannual anomalous states. Our study also suggests that NAO, EA, EAWR and MOI could critically interfere with internal, deep and abyssal ocean dynamics and variability in the Mediterranean Sea.

Using sea surface temperatures to improve performance of single dynamical downscaling model in flood simulation under climate change

Science.gov (United States)

Chao, Y.; Cheng, C. T.; Hsiao, Y. H.; Hsu, C. T.; Yeh, K. C.; Liu, P. L.

2017-12-01

There are 5.3 typhoons hit Taiwan per year on average in last decade. Typhoon Morakot in 2009, the most severe typhoon, causes huge damage in Taiwan, including 677 casualties and roughly NT 110 billion (3.3 billion USD) in economic loss. Some researches documented that typhoon frequency will decrease but increase in intensity in western North Pacific region. It is usually preferred to use high resolution dynamical model to get better projection of extreme events; because coarse resolution models cannot simulate intense extreme events. Under that consideration, dynamical downscaling climate data was chosen to describe typhoon satisfactorily, this research used the simulation data from AGCM of Meteorological Research Institute (MRI-AGCM). Considering dynamical downscaling methods consume massive computing power, and typhoon number is very limited in a single model simulation, using dynamical downscaling data could cause uncertainty in disaster risk assessment. In order to improve the problem, this research used four sea surfaces temperatures (SSTs) to increase the climate change scenarios under RCP 8.5. In this way, MRI-AGCMs project 191 extreme typhoons in Taiwan (when typhoon center touches 300 km sea area of Taiwan) in late 21th century. SOBEK, a two dimensions flood simulation model, was used to assess the flood risk under four SSTs climate change scenarios in Tainan, Taiwan. The results show the uncertainty of future flood risk assessment is significantly decreased in Tainan, Taiwan in late 21th century. Four SSTs could efficiently improve the problems of limited typhoon numbers in single model simulation.

Climate change due to greenhouse effects in China as simulated by a regional climate model

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gao, X.J.; Zhao, Z.C.; Ding, Y.H.; Huang, R.H.; Giorgi, F. [National Climate Centre, Beijing (China)

2001-07-01

Impacts of greenhouse effects (2 x CO{sub 2}) upon climate change over China as simulated by a regional climate model over China (RegCM / China) have been investigated. The model was based on RegCM2 and was nested to a global coupled ocean-atmosphere model (CSIRO R21L9 AOGCM model). Results of the control run (1 x CO{sub 2}) indicated that simulations of surface air temperature and precipitation in China by RegCM are much better than that by the global coupled model because of a higher resolution. Results of sensitive experiment by RegCM with 2 x CO{sub 2} showed that the surface air temperature over China might increase remarkably due to greenhouse effect, especially in winter season and in North China. Precipitation might also increase in most parts of China due to the CO{sub 2} doubling.

Impact of high resolution land surface initialization in Indian summer ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

The direct impact of high resolution land surface initialization on the forecast bias in a regional climate model in recent years ... surface initialization using a regional climate model. ...... ization of the snow field in a cloud model; J. Clim. Appl.

Scottish Sea Lochs: High Resolution Archives of North Atlantic Climate

Science.gov (United States)

Norgaard-Pedersen, N.; Austin, W. E.; Cage, A. G.; Shimmield, T. M.; Gillibrand, P. A.

2002-12-01

The sea lochs (fjords) of NW Scotland bridge the land-ocean interface in a region of Europe which is particularly well situated to monitor changes in westerly air flow. Inter-annual atmospheric circulation changes at this latitude are largely governed by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), in turn influencing both westerlies and precipitation. Comparing two extreme recent NAO years, circulation modelling results from Loch Sunart, NW Scotland, reveal a clear response to freshwater runoff and wind forcing in both magnitude and rate of deep-water renewal events. Scottish fjords, because of the relatively small impact which salinity has on d18Owater (0.18 % per salinity unit), potentially provide NW Europe's most useful study sites in coastal palaeoclimate research, particularly where palaeotemperature is the primary record of interest. New data from a high-resolution record (7 yr sample resolution), spanning the last two millennia, from the deepest part of the main basin of Loch Sunart illustrate significant multi-decadal to centennial scale variability in the sedimentary and stable isotope record of epibenthic foraminifera Cibicides lobatulus. The long-term pattern in benthic d18O appears to reflect bottom water temperature differences of 1-2§C, resolving climatic periods such as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Since the core site is connected with shelf waters (i.e. no shallow sill) it seems likely that this paleotemperature reflects changing shelf water, not the exchange process as a function of long-term runoff/wind forcing. Grain size data and XRF data point to catchment-wide responses (weathering and erosion) which appear to show the largest variability during the last millennium, driven either by rainfall and temperature and/or land-use. Pb-isotope data, constraining the modern and industrial period, suggest accelerated sedimentation rates over this interval. On-going work attempts to calibrate proxy data with instrumental historical data.

High resolution estimates of the corrosion risk for cultural heritage in Italy.

Science.gov (United States)

De Marco, Alessandra; Screpanti, Augusto; Mircea, Mihaela; Piersanti, Antonio; Proietti, Chiara; Fornasier, M Francesca

2017-07-01

Air pollution plays a pivotal role in the deterioration of many materials used in buildings and cultural monuments causing an inestimable damage. This study aims to estimate the impacts of air pollution (SO 2 , HNO 3 , O 3 , PM 10 ) and meteorological conditions (temperature, precipitation, relative humidity) on limestone, copper and bronze based on high resolution air quality data-base produced with AMS-MINNI modelling system over the Italian territory over the time period 2003-2010. A comparison between high resolution data (AMS-MINNI grid, 4 × 4 km) and low resolution data (EMEP grid, 50 × 50 km) has been performed. Our results pointed out that the corrosion levels for limestone, copper and bronze are decreased in Italy from 2003 to 2010 in relation to decrease of pollutant concentrations. However, some problem related to air pollution persists especially in Northern and Southern Italy. In particular, PM 10 and HNO 3 are considered the main responsible for limestone corrosion. Moreover, the high resolution data (AMS-MINNI) allowed the identification of risk areas that are not visible with the low resolution data (EMEP modelling system) in all considered years and, especially, in the limestone case. Consequently, high resolution air quality simulations are suitable to provide concrete benefits in providing information for national effective policy against corrosion risk for cultural heritage, also in the context of climate changes that are affecting strongly Mediterranean basin. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Simulation of synoptic and sub-synoptic phenomena over East Africa and Arabian Peninsula for current and future climate using a high resolution AGCM

KAUST Repository

Raj, Jerry; Bangalath, Hamza Kunhu; Stenchikov, Georgiy L.

2015-01-01

between regional and global scale processes. Our initial results show that HiRAM simulations for historic period well reproduce the regional climate in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula with their complex interplay of regional and global processes. Our

Using an ensemble of climate projections for simulating recent and near-future hydrological change to lake Vaenern in Sweden

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Olsson, Jonas; Yang, Wei; Graham, L. Phil; Rosberg, Joergen; Andreasson, Johan (Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Inst., Norrkoeping (Sweden)), e-mail: jonas.olsson@smhi.se

2011-01-15

Lake Vaenern and River Goeta aelv in southern Sweden constitute a large and complex hydrological system that is highly vulnerable to climate change. In this study, an ensemble of 12 regional climate projections is used to simulate the inflow to Lake Vaenern by the HBV hydrological model. By using distribution based scaling of the climate model output, all projections can accurately reproduce the annual cycle of mean monthly inflows for the period 1961-1990 as simulated using HBV with observed temperature and precipitation ('HBVobs'). Significant changes towards higher winter inflow and a reduced spring flood were found when comparing the period 1991-2008 to 1961-1990 in the HBVobs simulations and the ability of the regional projections to reproduce these changes varied. The main uncertainties in the projections for 1991-2008 were found to originate from the global climate model used, including its initialization, and in one case, the emissions scenario, whereas the regional climate model used and its resolution showed a smaller influence. The projections that most accurately reproduce the recent change suggest that the current trends in the winter and spring inflows will continue over the period 2009-2030

High-Resolution Mesoscale Simulations of the 6-7 May 2000 Missouri Flash Flood: Impact of Model Initialization and Land Surface Treatment

Science.gov (United States)

Baker, R. David; Wang, Yansen; Tao, Wei-Kuo; Wetzel, Peter; Belcher, Larry R.

2004-01-01

High-resolution mesoscale model simulations of the 6-7 May 2000 Missouri flash flood event were performed to test the impact of model initialization and land surface treatment on timing, intensity, and location of extreme precipitation. In this flash flood event, a mesoscale convective system (MCS) produced over 340 mm of rain in roughly 9 hours in some locations. Two different types of model initialization were employed: 1) NCEP global reanalysis with 2.5-degree grid spacing and 12-hour temporal resolution, and 2) Eta reanalysis with 40- km grid spacing and $hour temporal resolution. In addition, two different land surface treatments were considered. A simple land scheme. (SLAB) keeps soil moisture fixed at initial values throughout the simulation, while a more sophisticated land model (PLACE) allows for r interactive feedback. Simulations with high-resolution Eta model initialization show considerable improvement in the intensity of precipitation due to the presence in the initialization of a residual mesoscale convective vortex (hlCV) from a previous MCS. Simulations with the PLACE land model show improved location of heavy precipitation. Since soil moisture can vary over time in the PLACE model, surface energy fluxes exhibit strong spatial gradients. These surface energy flux gradients help produce a strong low-level jet (LLJ) in the correct location. The LLJ then interacts with the cold outflow boundary of the MCS to produce new convective cells. The simulation with both high-resolution model initialization and time-varying soil moisture test reproduces the intensity and location of observed rainfall.

Evaluation of uncertainties in regional climate change simulations

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pan, Z.; Christensen, J. H.; Arritt, R. W.

2001-01-01

, an atmosphere-ocean coupled general circulation model (GCM) current climate, and a future scenario of transient climate change. Common precipitation climatology features simulated by both models included realistic orographic precipitation, east-west transcontinental gradients, and reasonable annual cycles over...... to different subgrid scale processes in individual models. The ratio of climate change to biases, which we use as one measure of confidence in projected climate changes, is substantially larger than 1 in several seasons and regions while the ratios are always less than 1 in summer. The largest ratios among all...... regions are in California. Spatial correlation coefficients of precipitation were computed between simulation pairs in the 2x3 set. The climate change correlation is highest and the RCM performance correlation is lowest while boundary forcing and intermodel correlations are intermediate. The high spatial...

High Resolution Spatiotemporal Climate Reconstruction and Variability in East Asia during Little Ice Age

Science.gov (United States)

Lin, K. H. E.; Wang, P. K.; Lee, S. Y.; Liao, Y. C.; Fan, I. C.; Liao, H. M.

2017-12-01

The Little ice Age (LIA) is one of the most prominent epochs in paleoclimate reconstruction of the Common Era. While the signals of LIA were generally discovered across hemispheres, wide arrays of regional variability were found, and the reconstructed anomalies were sometimes inconsistent across studies by using various proxy data or historical records. This inconsistency is mainly attributed to limited data coverage at fine resolution that can assist high-resolution climate reconstruction in the continuous spatiotemporal trends. Qing dynasty (1644-1911 CE) of China existed in the coldest period of LIA. Owing to a long-standing tradition that acquired local officials to record odds and social or meteorological events, thousands of local chronicles were left. Zhang eds. (2004) took two decades to compile all these meteorological records in a compendium, for which we then digitized and coded all records into our REACHS database system for reconstructing climate. There were in total 1,435 points (sites) in our database for over 80,000 events in the period of time. After implementing two-rounds coding check for data quality control (accuracy rate 87.2%), multiple indexes were retrieved for reconstructing annually and seasonally resolved temperature and precipitation series for North, Central, and South China. The reconstruction methods include frequency count and grading, with usage of multiple regression models to test sensitivity and to calculate correlations among several reconstructed series. Validation was also conducted through comparison with instrumental data and with other reconstructed series in previous studies. Major research results reveal interannual (3-5 years), decadal (8-12 years), and interdecadal (≈30 years) variabilities with strong regional expressions across East China. Cooling effect was not homogenously distributed in space and time. Flood and drought conditions frequently repeated but the spatiotemporal pattern was variant, indicating likely

A transient fully coupled climate-ice-sheet simulation of the last glacial inception

Science.gov (United States)

Lofverstrom, M.; Otto-Bliesner, B. L.; Lipscomb, W. H.; Fyke, J. G.; Marshall, S.; Sacks, B.; Brady, E. C.

2017-12-01

The last glacial inception occurred around 115 ka, following a relative minimum in the Northern Hemisphere summer insolation. It is believed that small and spatially separated ice caps initially formed in the high elevation regions of northern Canada, Scandinavia, and along the Siberian Arctic coast. These ice caps subsequently migrated down in the valleys where they coalesced and formed the initial seeds of the large coherent ice masses that covered the northern parts of the North American and Eurasian continents over most of the last glacial cycle. Sea level records show that the initial growth period lasted for about 10 kyrs, and the resulting ice sheets may have lowered the global sea level by as much as 30 to 50 meters. Here we examine the transient climate system evolution over the period between 118 and 110 ka, using the fully coupled Community Earth System Model, version 2 (CESM2). This model features a two-way coupled high-resolution (4x4 km) ice-sheet component (Community Ice Sheet model, version 2; CISM2) that simulates ice sheets as an interactive component of the climate system. We impose a transient forcing protocol where the greenhouse gas concentrations and the orbital parameters follow the nominal year in the simulation; the model topography is also dynamically evolving in order to reflect changes in ice elevation throughout the simulation. The analysis focuses on how the climate system evolves over this time interval, with a special focus on glacial inception in the high-latitude continents. Results will highlight how the evolving ice sheets compare to data and previous model based reconstructions.

Sensitivity to grid resolution in the ability of a chemical transport model to simulate observed oxidant chemistry under high-isoprene conditions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

K. Yu

2016-04-01

Full Text Available Formation of ozone and organic aerosol in continental atmospheres depends on whether isoprene emitted by vegetation is oxidized by the high-NOx pathway (where peroxy radicals react with NO or by low-NOx pathways (where peroxy radicals react by alternate channels, mostly with HO2. We used mixed layer observations from the SEAC4RS aircraft campaign over the Southeast US to test the ability of the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model at different grid resolutions (0.25°  ×  0.3125°, 2°  ×  2.5°, 4°  ×  5° to simulate this chemistry under high-isoprene, variable-NOx conditions. Observations of isoprene and NOx over the Southeast US show a negative correlation, reflecting the spatial segregation of emissions; this negative correlation is captured in the model at 0.25°  ×  0.3125° resolution but not at coarser resolutions. As a result, less isoprene oxidation takes place by the high-NOx pathway in the model at 0.25°  ×  0.3125° resolution (54 % than at coarser resolution (59 %. The cumulative probability distribution functions (CDFs of NOx, isoprene, and ozone concentrations show little difference across model resolutions and good agreement with observations, while formaldehyde is overestimated at coarse resolution because excessive isoprene oxidation takes place by the high-NOx pathway with high formaldehyde yield. The good agreement of simulated and observed concentration variances implies that smaller-scale non-linearities (urban and power plant plumes are not important on the regional scale. Correlations of simulated vs. observed concentrations do not improve with grid resolution because finer modes of variability are intrinsically more difficult to capture. Higher model resolution leads to decreased conversion of NOx to organic nitrates and increased conversion to nitric acid, with total reactive nitrogen oxides (NOy changing little across model resolutions. Model concentrations in the

Local-scale changes in mean and heavy precipitation in Western Europe, climate change or internal variability?

Science.gov (United States)

Aalbers, Emma E.; Lenderink, Geert; van Meijgaard, Erik; van den Hurk, Bart J. J. M.

2017-09-01

High-resolution climate information provided by e.g. regional climate models (RCMs) is valuable for exploring the changing weather under global warming, and assessing the local impact of climate change. While there is generally more confidence in the representativeness of simulated processes at higher resolutions, internal variability of the climate system—`noise', intrinsic to the chaotic nature of atmospheric and oceanic processes—is larger at smaller spatial scales as well, limiting the predictability of the climate signal. To quantify the internal variability and robustly estimate the climate signal, large initial-condition ensembles of climate simulations conducted with a single model provide essential information. We analyze a regional downscaling of a 16-member initial-condition ensemble over western Europe and the Alps at 0.11° resolution, similar to the highest resolution EURO-CORDEX simulations. We examine the strength of the forced climate response (signal) in mean and extreme daily precipitation with respect to noise due to internal variability, and find robust small-scale geographical features in the forced response, indicating regional differences in changes in the probability of events. However, individual ensemble members provide only limited information on the forced climate response, even for high levels of global warming. Although the results are based on a single RCM-GCM chain, we believe that they have general value in providing insight in the fraction of the uncertainty in high-resolution climate information that is irreducible, and can assist in the correct interpretation of fine-scale information in multi-model ensembles in terms of a forced response and noise due to internal variability.

Local-scale changes in mean and heavy precipitation in Western Europe, climate change or internal variability?

Science.gov (United States)

Aalbers, Emma E.; Lenderink, Geert; van Meijgaard, Erik; van den Hurk, Bart J. J. M.

2018-06-01

High-resolution climate information provided by e.g. regional climate models (RCMs) is valuable for exploring the changing weather under global warming, and assessing the local impact of climate change. While there is generally more confidence in the representativeness of simulated processes at higher resolutions, internal variability of the climate system—`noise', intrinsic to the chaotic nature of atmospheric and oceanic processes—is larger at smaller spatial scales as well, limiting the predictability of the climate signal. To quantify the internal variability and robustly estimate the climate signal, large initial-condition ensembles of climate simulations conducted with a single model provide essential information. We analyze a regional downscaling of a 16-member initial-condition ensemble over western Europe and the Alps at 0.11° resolution, similar to the highest resolution EURO-CORDEX simulations. We examine the strength of the forced climate response (signal) in mean and extreme daily precipitation with respect to noise due to internal variability, and find robust small-scale geographical features in the forced response, indicating regional differences in changes in the probability of events. However, individual ensemble members provide only limited information on the forced climate response, even for high levels of global warming. Although the results are based on a single RCM-GCM chain, we believe that they have general value in providing insight in the fraction of the uncertainty in high-resolution climate information that is irreducible, and can assist in the correct interpretation of fine-scale information in multi-model ensembles in terms of a forced response and noise due to internal variability.

A High-Resolution Terrestrial Modeling System (TMS): A Demonstration in China

Science.gov (United States)

Duan, Q.; Dai, Y.; Zheng, X.; Ye, A.; Ji, D.; Chen, Z.

2013-12-01

This presentation describes a terrestrial modeling system (TMS) developed at Beijing Normal University. The TMS is designed to be driven by multi-sensor meteorological and land surface observations, including those from satellites and land based observing stations. The purposes of the TMS are (1) to provide a land surface parameterization scheme fully capable of being coupled with the Earth system models; (2) to provide a standalone platform for retrospective historical simulation and for forecasting of future land surface processes at different space and time scales; and (3) to provide a platform for studying human-Earth system interactions and for understanding climate change impacts. This system is built on capabilities among several groups at BNU, including the Common Land Model (CoLM) system, high-resolution atmospheric forcing data sets, high resolution land surface characteristics data sets, data assimilation and uncertainty analysis platforms, ensemble prediction platform, and high-performance computing facilities. This presentation intends to describe the system design and demonstrate the capabilities of TMS with results from a China-wide application.

Changes in the world rivers' discharge projected from an updated high resolution dataset of current and future climate zones

Science.gov (United States)

Santini, Monia; di Paola, Arianna

2015-12-01

In this paper, an updated global map of the current climate zoning and of its projections, according to the Köppen-Geiger classification, is first provided. The map at high horizontal resolution (0.5° × 0.5°), representative of the current (i.e. 1961-2005) conditions, is based on the Climate Research Unit dataset holding gridded series of historical observed temperature and precipitation, while projected conditions rely on the simulated series, for the same variables, by the General Circulation Model CMCC-CM. Modeled variables were corrected for their bias and then projections of climate zoning were generated for the medium term (2006-2050) and long term (2056-2100) future periods, under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 emission scenarios. Results show that Equatorial and Arid climates will spread at the expenses of Snow and Polar climates, with the Warm Temperate experiencing more moderate increase. Maps of climate zones are valuable for a wide range of studies on climate change and its impacts, especially those regarding the water cycle that is strongly regulated by the combined conditions of precipitation and temperature. As example of large scale hydrological applications, in this work we tested and implemented a spatial statistical procedure, the geographically weighted regression among climate zones' surface and mean annual discharge (MAD) at hydrographic basin level, to quantify likely changes in MAD for the main world rivers monitored through the Global Runoff Data Center database. The selected river basins are representative of more than half of both global superficial freshwater resources and world's land area. Globally, a decrease in MAD is projected both in the medium term and long term, while spatial differences highlight how some areas require efforts to avoid consequences of amplified water scarcity, while other areas call for strategies to take the opportunity from the expected increase in water availability. Also the fluctuations of trends between the

S-World: A high resolution global soil database for simulation modelling (Invited)

Science.gov (United States)

Stoorvogel, J. J.

2013-12-01

There is an increasing call for high resolution soil information at the global level. A good example for such a call is the Global Gridded Crop Model Intercomparison carried out within AgMIP. While local studies can make use of surveying techniques to collect additional techniques this is practically impossible at the global level. It is therefore important to rely on legacy data like the Harmonized World Soil Database. Several efforts do exist that aim at the development of global gridded soil property databases. These estimates of the variation of soil properties can be used to assess e.g., global soil carbon stocks. However, they do not allow for simulation runs with e.g., crop growth simulation models as these models require a description of the entire pedon rather than a few soil properties. This study provides the required quantitative description of pedons at a 1 km resolution for simulation modelling. It uses the Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD) for the spatial distribution of soil types, the ISRIC-WISE soil profile database to derive information on soil properties per soil type, and a range of co-variables on topography, climate, and land cover to further disaggregate the available data. The methodology aims to take stock of these available data. The soil database is developed in five main steps. Step 1: All 148 soil types are ordered on the basis of their expected topographic position using e.g., drainage, salinization, and pedogenesis. Using the topographic ordering and combining the HWSD with a digital elevation model allows for the spatial disaggregation of the composite soil units. This results in a new soil map with homogeneous soil units. Step 2: The ranges of major soil properties for the topsoil and subsoil of each of the 148 soil types are derived from the ISRIC-WISE soil profile database. Step 3: A model of soil formation is developed that focuses on the basic conceptual question where we are within the range of a particular soil property

A method for generating high resolution satellite image time series

Science.gov (United States)

Guo, Tao

2014-10-01

There is an increasing demand for satellite remote sensing data with both high spatial and temporal resolution in many applications. But it still is a challenge to simultaneously improve spatial resolution and temporal frequency due to the technical limits of current satellite observation systems. To this end, much R&D efforts have been ongoing for years and lead to some successes roughly in two aspects, one includes super resolution, pan-sharpen etc. methods which can effectively enhance the spatial resolution and generate good visual effects, but hardly preserve spectral signatures and result in inadequate analytical value, on the other hand, time interpolation is a straight forward method to increase temporal frequency, however it increase little informative contents in fact. In this paper we presented a novel method to simulate high resolution time series data by combing low resolution time series data and a very small number of high resolution data only. Our method starts with a pair of high and low resolution data set, and then a spatial registration is done by introducing LDA model to map high and low resolution pixels correspondingly. Afterwards, temporal change information is captured through a comparison of low resolution time series data, and then projected onto the high resolution data plane and assigned to each high resolution pixel according to the predefined temporal change patterns of each type of ground objects. Finally the simulated high resolution data is generated. A preliminary experiment shows that our method can simulate a high resolution data with a reasonable accuracy. The contribution of our method is to enable timely monitoring of temporal changes through analysis of time sequence of low resolution images only, and usage of costly high resolution data can be reduces as much as possible, and it presents a highly effective way to build up an economically operational monitoring solution for agriculture, forest, land use investigation

QUAL-NET, a high temporal-resolution eutrophication model for large hydrographic networks

Science.gov (United States)

Minaudo, Camille; Curie, Florence; Jullian, Yann; Gassama, Nathalie; Moatar, Florentina

2018-04-01

To allow climate change impact assessment of water quality in river systems, the scientific community lacks efficient deterministic models able to simulate hydrological and biogeochemical processes in drainage networks at the regional scale, with high temporal resolution and water temperature explicitly determined. The model QUALity-NETwork (QUAL-NET) was developed and tested on the Middle Loire River Corridor, a sub-catchment of the Loire River in France, prone to eutrophication. Hourly variations computed efficiently by the model helped disentangle the complex interactions existing between hydrological and biological processes across different timescales. Phosphorus (P) availability was the most constraining factor for phytoplankton development in the Loire River, but simulating bacterial dynamics in QUAL-NET surprisingly evidenced large amounts of organic matter recycled within the water column through the microbial loop, which delivered significant fluxes of available P and enhanced phytoplankton growth. This explained why severe blooms still occur in the Loire River despite large P input reductions since 1990. QUAL-NET could be used to study past evolutions or predict future trajectories under climate change and land use scenarios.

QUAL-NET, a high temporal-resolution eutrophication model for large hydrographic networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

C. Minaudo

2018-04-01

Full Text Available To allow climate change impact assessment of water quality in river systems, the scientific community lacks efficient deterministic models able to simulate hydrological and biogeochemical processes in drainage networks at the regional scale, with high temporal resolution and water temperature explicitly determined. The model QUALity-NETwork (QUAL-NET was developed and tested on the Middle Loire River Corridor, a sub-catchment of the Loire River in France, prone to eutrophication. Hourly variations computed efficiently by the model helped disentangle the complex interactions existing between hydrological and biological processes across different timescales. Phosphorus (P availability was the most constraining factor for phytoplankton development in the Loire River, but simulating bacterial dynamics in QUAL-NET surprisingly evidenced large amounts of organic matter recycled within the water column through the microbial loop, which delivered significant fluxes of available P and enhanced phytoplankton growth. This explained why severe blooms still occur in the Loire River despite large P input reductions since 1990. QUAL-NET could be used to study past evolutions or predict future trajectories under climate change and land use scenarios.

Hourly test reference weather data in the changing climate of Finland for building energy simulations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kirsti Jylhä

2015-09-01

Full Text Available Dynamic building energy simulations need hourly weather data as input. The same high temporal resolution is required for assessments of future heating and cooling energy demand. The data presented in this article concern current typical values and estimated future changes in outdoor air temperature, wind speed, relative humidity and global, diffuse and normal solar radiation components. Simulated annual and seasonal delivered energy consumptions for heating of spaces, heating of ventilation supply air and cooling of spaces in the current and future climatic conditions are also presented for an example house, with district heating and a mechanical space cooling system. We provide details on how the synthetic future weather files were created and utilised as input data for dynamic building energy simulations by the IDA Indoor Climate and Energy program and also for calculations of heating and cooling degree-day sums. The information supplied here is related to the research article titled “Energy demand for the heating and cooling of residential houses in Finland in a changing climate” [1].

Analysis of high-resolution simulations for the Black Forest region from a point of view of tourism climatology - a comparison between two regional climate models (REMO and CLM)

Science.gov (United States)

Endler, Christina; Matzarakis, Andreas

2011-03-01

An analysis of climate simulations from a point of view of tourism climatology based on two regional climate models, namely REMO and CLM, was performed for a regional domain in the southwest of Germany, the Black Forest region, for two time frames, 1971-2000 that represents the twentieth century climate and 2021-2050 that represents the future climate. In that context, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios A1B and B1 are used. The analysis focuses on human-biometeorological and applied climatologic issues, especially for tourism purposes - that means parameters belonging to thermal (physiologically equivalent temperature, PET), physical (precipitation, snow, wind), and aesthetic (fog, cloud cover) facets of climate in tourism. In general, both models reveal similar trends, but differ in their extent. The trend of thermal comfort is contradicting: it tends to decrease in REMO, while it shows a slight increase in CLM. Moreover, REMO reveals a wider range of future climate trends than CLM, especially for sunshine, dry days, and heat stress. Both models are driven by the same global coupled atmosphere-ocean model ECHAM5/MPI-OM. Because both models are not able to resolve meso- and micro-scale processes such as cloud microphysics, differences between model results and discrepancies in the development of even those parameters (e.g., cloud formation and cover) are due to different model parameterization and formulation. Climatic changes expected by 2050 are small compared to 2100, but may have major impacts on tourism as for example, snow cover and its duration are highly vulnerable to a warmer climate directly affecting tourism in winter. Beyond indirect impacts are of high relevance as they influence tourism as well. Thus, changes in climate, natural environment, demography, tourists' demands, among other things affect economy in general. The analysis of the CLM results and its comparison with the REMO results complete the analysis performed

Air quality high resolution simulations of Italian urban areas with WRF-CHIMERE

Science.gov (United States)

Falasca, Serena; Curci, Gabriele

2017-04-01

The new European Directive on ambient air quality and cleaner air for Europe (2008/50/EC) encourages the use of modeling techniques to support the observations in the assessment and forecasting of air quality. The modelling system based on the combination of the WRF meteorological model and the CHIMERE chemistry-transport model is used to perform simulations at high resolution over the main Italian cities (e.g. Milan, Rome). Three domains covering Europe, Italy and the urban areas are nested with a decreasing grid size up to 1 km. Numerical results are produced for a winter month and a summer month of the year 2010 and are validated using ground-based observations (e.g. from the European air quality database AirBase). A sensitivity study is performed using different physics options, domain resolution and grid ratio; different urban parameterization schemes are tested using also characteristic morphology parameters for the cities considered. A spatial reallocation of anthropogenic emissions derived from international (e.g. EMEP, TNO, HTAP) and national (e.g. CTN-ACE) emissions inventories and based on the land cover datasets (Global Land Cover Facility and GlobCover) and the OpenStreetMap tool is also included. Preliminary results indicate that the introduction of the spatial redistribution at high-resolution allows a more realistic reproduction of the distribution of the emission flows and thus the concentrations of the pollutants, with significant advantages especially for the urban environments.

Impacts of spectral nudging on the simulated surface air temperature in summer compared with the selection of shortwave radiation and land surface model physics parameterization in a high-resolution regional atmospheric model

Science.gov (United States)

Park, Jun; Hwang, Seung-On

2017-11-01

The impact of a spectral nudging technique for the dynamical downscaling of the summer surface air temperature in a high-resolution regional atmospheric model is assessed. The performance of this technique is measured by comparing 16 analysis-driven simulation sets of physical parameterization combinations of two shortwave radiation and four land surface model schemes of the model, which are known to be crucial for the simulation of the surface air temperature. It is found that the application of spectral nudging to the outermost domain has a greater impact on the regional climate than any combination of shortwave radiation and land surface model physics schemes. The optimal choice of two model physics parameterizations is helpful for obtaining more realistic spatiotemporal distributions of land surface variables such as the surface air temperature, precipitation, and surface fluxes. However, employing spectral nudging adds more value to the results; the improvement is greater than using sophisticated shortwave radiation and land surface model physical parameterizations. This result indicates that spectral nudging applied to the outermost domain provides a more accurate lateral boundary condition to the innermost domain when forced by analysis data by securing the consistency with large-scale forcing over a regional domain. This consequently indirectly helps two physical parameterizations to produce small-scale features closer to the observed values, leading to a better representation of the surface air temperature in a high-resolution downscaled climate.

Analysis of winter climate simulations performed with ARPEGE-Climat (T63) in the framework of PROVOST

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Parey, S.; Dichampt-Martineu, Ch.; Caneill, J.Y. [Electricite de France, 78 - Chatou (France). Research Branch, Environment

1997-12-01

The interest of EDF for seasonal forecasting is a consequence of the high sensitivity of electricity consumption to temperature, especially during the winter season. That is why the Research branch of EDF is involved in the PROVOST project (PRediction Of climate Variations On Seasonal and inter-annual Timescales). Two sets of simulations are studied. The first one was calculated apart from the PROVOST experiments with the LMD model covering the 1970 to 1992 winters with eleven simulations per winter. The second one was calculated at EDF in the framework of PROVOST with ARPEGE-Climat model, covering the 1979 to 1994 winters (nine simulations per winter). The probabilistic formulation of climatic scenarios in function of the seasonal simulations with ARPEGE-Climat gives good results if the monthly mean temperature is taken into account. (R.P.) 3 refs.

Evaluation of uncertainties in mean and extreme precipitation under climate change for northwestern Mediterranean watersheds from high-resolution Med and Euro-CORDEX ensembles

Science.gov (United States)

Colmet-Daage, Antoine; Sanchez-Gomez, Emilia; Ricci, Sophie; Llovel, Cécile; Borrell Estupina, Valérie; Quintana-Seguí, Pere; Llasat, Maria Carmen; Servat, Eric

2018-01-01

The climate change impact on mean and extreme precipitation events in the northern Mediterranean region is assessed using high-resolution EuroCORDEX and MedCORDEX simulations. The focus is made on three regions, Lez and Aude located in France, and Muga located in northeastern Spain, and eight pairs of global and regional climate models are analyzed with respect to the SAFRAN product. First the model skills are evaluated in terms of bias for the precipitation annual cycle over historical period. Then future changes in extreme precipitation, under two emission scenarios, are estimated through the computation of past/future change coefficients of quantile-ranked model precipitation outputs. Over the 1981-2010 period, the cumulative precipitation is overestimated for most models over the mountainous regions and underestimated over the coastal regions in autumn and higher-order quantile. The ensemble mean and the spread for future period remain unchanged under RCP4.5 scenario and decrease under RCP8.5 scenario. Extreme precipitation events are intensified over the three catchments with a smaller ensemble spread under RCP8.5 revealing more evident changes, especially in the later part of the 21st century.

A Central European precipitation climatology – Part II: Application of the high-resolution HYRAS data for COSMO-CLM evaluation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Susanne Brienen

2016-05-01

Full Text Available The horizontal resolution of regional climate model (RCM simulations is increasing constantly in the last years. For the evaluation of these simulations and the further development of the models, adequate observational data sets are required, in particular with respect to the spatial scales. The aim of this paper is to investigate the value of a new high-resolution precipitation climatology, the HYRAS-PRE v.2.0 data set, for the evaluation of RCM output. HYRAS-PRE is available for the time period 1951–2006 at daily resolution and covers ten river catchments in Germany and neighbouring countries at a spatial grid spacing of 5 km. A set of simulations with the regional climate model COSMO-CLM with three different grid spacings (~7$\\sim7$, 14 and 28 km is used for this model evaluation study. In addition, three other data sets with different horizontal resolution are considered in the comparisons: the E‑OBS v.8.0 gridded observations (~25$\\sim25$ km grid spacing, the ERA-Interim reanalysis (~79$\\sim79$ km and the analysis of the driving model GME (~40$\\sim40$–60 km. For three selected years, different spatial and temporal characteristics of daily precipitation are investigated. In all the analyzed precipitation characteristics, it is found that the variability between the data sets is very large. The benefit of an evaluation with HYRAS-PRE compared to coarser-resolved observations becomes visible especially in the representation of the frequency of occurrence distribution of daily precipitation amounts and in the spatial variability of different precipitation indices. A second goal of this study was to estimate the error when comparing a high resolution simulated precipitation field with coarser resolved observations. Comparing the HYRAS-PRE average over an area of 5×5$5\\times5$ grid points with the original HYRAS-PRE data results in a systematic underestimation of high values of all indices considered and an overestimation

Projected changes of extreme weather events in the eastern United States based on a high resolution climate modeling system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gao, Y; Fu, J S; Drake, J B; Liu, Y; Lamarque, J-F

2012-01-01

This study is the first evaluation of dynamical downscaling using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model on a 4 km × 4 km high resolution scale in the eastern US driven by the new Community Earth System Model version 1.0 (CESM v1.0). First we examined the global and regional climate model results, and corrected an inconsistency in skin temperature during the downscaling process by modifying the land/sea mask. In comparison with observations, WRF shows statistically significant improvement over CESM in reproducing extreme weather events, with improvement for heat wave frequency estimation as high as 98%. The fossil fuel intensive scenario Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 was used to study a possible future mid-century climate extreme in 2057–9. Both the heat waves and the extreme precipitation in 2057–9 are more severe than the present climate in the Eastern US. The Northeastern US shows large increases in both heat wave intensity (3.05 °C higher) and annual extreme precipitation (107.3 mm more per year). (letter)

Uncertainty in Simulating Wheat Yields Under Climate Change

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Asseng, S.; Ewert, F.; Rosenzweig, C.; Jones, J.W.; Hatfield, Jerry; Ruane, Alex; Boote, K. J.; Thorburn, Peter; Rotter, R.P.; Cammarano, D.; Brisson, N.; Basso, B.; Martre, P.; Aggarwal, P.K.; Angulo, C.; Bertuzzi, P.; Biernath, C.; Challinor, AJ; Doltra, J.; Gayler, S.; Goldberg, R.; Grant, Robert; Heng, L.; Hooker, J.; Hunt, L.A.; Ingwersen, J.; Izaurralde, Roberto C.; Kersebaum, K.C.; Mueller, C.; Naresh Kumar, S.; Nendel, C.; O' Leary, G.O.; Olesen, JE; Osborne, T.; Palosuo, T.; Priesack, E.; Ripoche, D.; Semenov, M.A.; Shcherbak, I.; Steduto, P.; Stockle, Claudio O.; Stratonovitch, P.; Streck, T.; Supit, I.; Tao, F.; Travasso, M.; Waha, K.; Wallach, D.; White, J.W.; Williams, J.R.; Wolf, J.

2013-09-01

Anticipating the impacts of climate change on crop yields is critical for assessing future food security. Process-based crop simulation models are the most commonly used tools in such assessments1,2. Analysis of uncertainties in future greenhouse gas emissions and their impacts on future climate change has been increasingly described in the literature3,4 while assessments of the uncertainty in crop responses to climate change are very rare. Systematic and objective comparisons across impact studies is difficult, and thus has not been fully realized5. Here we present the largest coordinated and standardized crop model intercomparison for climate change impacts on wheat production to date. We found that several individual crop models are able to reproduce measured grain yields under current diverse environments, particularly if sufficient details are provided to execute them. However, simulated climate change impacts can vary across models due to differences in model structures and algorithms. The crop-model component of uncertainty in climate change impact assessments was considerably larger than the climate-model component from Global Climate Models (GCMs). Model responses to high temperatures and temperature-by-CO2 interactions are identified as major sources of simulated impact uncertainties. Significant reductions in impact uncertainties through model improvements in these areas and improved quantification of uncertainty through multi-model ensembles are urgently needed for a more reliable translation of climate change scenarios into agricultural impacts in order to develop adaptation strategies and aid policymaking.

Simulation and Modelling of Climate Change Effects on River Awara Flow Discharge using WEAP Model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Oyati E.N.

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Modelling of stream flow and discharge of river Awara under changed climate conditions using CLIMGEN for stochastic weather generation and WEAP model was used to simulate reserviour storage volume, water demand and river discharges at high spatial resolution (0.5°×0.5°, total 66,420 grid cells. Results of CLM-Based flow measurement shows a linear regression with R 2 = 0.99 for IFPRI-MNP- IGSM_WRS calibration. Sensitivity simulation of ambient long-term shows an increase in temperature with 0.5 o c thus the results of the studies generally show that annual runoff and river discharges could largely decrease. The projection of water demand 150 million m 3 by 2020 against the reservoir storage volume 60 million m 3 and decrease in rainfall depth by -5.7 mm. The output of the combined models used in this study is veritable to create robust water management system under different climate change scenarios.

Higher surface mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet revealed by high - resolution climate modeling

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ettema, Janneke; van den Broeke, Michiel R.; van Meijgaard, Erik; van de Berg, Willem Jan; Bamber, Jonathan L.; Box, Jason E.; Bales, Roger C.

2009-01-01

High‐resolution (∼11 km) regional climate modeling shows total annual precipitation on the Greenland ice sheet for 1958–2007 to be up to 24% and surface mass balance up to 63% higher than previously thought. The largest differences occur in coastal southeast Greenland, where the much higher

Quality and sensitivity of high-resolution numerical simulation of urban heat islands

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Li, Dan; Bou-Zeid, Elie

2014-01-01

High-resolution numerical simulations of the urban heat island (UHI) effect with the widely-used Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model are assessed. Both the sensitivity of the results to the simulation setup, and the quality of the simulated fields as representations of the real world, are investigated. Results indicate that the WRF-simulated surface temperatures are more sensitive to the planetary boundary layer (PBL) scheme choice during nighttime, and more sensitive to the surface thermal roughness length parameterization during daytime. The urban surface temperatures simulated by WRF are also highly sensitive to the urban canopy model (UCM) used. The implementation in this study of an improved UCM (the Princeton UCM or PUCM) that allows the simulation of heterogeneous urban facets and of key hydrological processes, together with the so-called CZ09 parameterization for the thermal roughness length, significantly reduce the bias (<1.5 °C) in the surface temperature fields as compared to satellite observations during daytime. The boundary layer potential temperature profiles are captured by WRF reasonable well at both urban and rural sites; the biases in these profiles relative to aircraft-mounted senor measurements are on the order of 1.5 °C. Changing UCMs and PBL schemes does not alter the performance of WRF in reproducing bulk boundary layer temperature profiles significantly. The results illustrate the wide range of urban environmental conditions that various configurations of WRF can produce, and the significant biases that should be assessed before inferences are made based on WRF outputs. The optimal set-up of WRF-PUCM developed in this paper also paves the way for a confident exploration of the city-scale impacts of UHI mitigation strategies in the companion paper (Li et al 2014). (letter)

High Resolution Numerical Simulations of Primary Atomization in Diesel Sprays with Single Component Reference Fuels

Science.gov (United States)

2015-09-01

NC. 14. ABSTRACT A high-resolution numerical simulation of jet breakup and spray formation from a complex diesel fuel injector at diesel engine... diesel fuel injector at diesel engine type conditions has been performed. A full understanding of the primary atomization process in diesel fuel... diesel liquid sprays the complexity is further compounded by the physical attributes present including nozzle turbulence, large density ratios

Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance: evaluating simulations and making projections with regional climate models

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

J. G. L. Rae

2012-11-01

Full Text Available Four high-resolution regional climate models (RCMs have been set up for the area of Greenland, with the aim of providing future projections of Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance (SMB, and its contribution to sea level rise, with greater accuracy than is possible from coarser-resolution general circulation models (GCMs. This is the first time an intercomparison has been carried out of RCM results for Greenland climate and SMB. Output from RCM simulations for the recent past with the four RCMs is evaluated against available observations. The evaluation highlights the importance of using a detailed snow physics scheme, especially regarding the representations of albedo and meltwater refreezing. Simulations with three of the RCMs for the 21st century using SRES scenario A1B from two GCMs produce trends of between −5.5 and −1.1 Gt yr⁻² in SMB (equivalent to +0.015 and +0.003 mm sea level equivalent yr⁻², with trends of smaller magnitude for scenario E1, in which emissions are mitigated. Results from one of the RCMs whose present-day simulation is most realistic indicate that an annual mean near-surface air temperature increase over Greenland of ~ 2°C would be required for the mass loss to increase such that it exceeds accumulation, thereby causing the SMB to become negative, which has been suggested as a threshold beyond which the ice sheet would eventually be eliminated.

Comparison of elastic-viscous-plastic and viscous-plastic dynamics models using a high resolution Arctic sea ice model

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hunke, E.C. [Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States); Zhang, Y. [Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA (United States)

1997-12-31

A nonlinear viscous-plastic (VP) rheology proposed by Hibler (1979) has been demonstrated to be the most suitable of the rheologies commonly used for modeling sea ice dynamics. However, the presence of a huge range of effective viscosities hinders numerical implementations of this model, particularly on high resolution grids or when the ice model is coupled to an ocean or atmosphere model. Hunke and Dukowicz (1997) have modified the VP model by including elastic waves as a numerical regularization in the case of zero strain rate. This modification (EVP) allows an efficient, fully explicit discretization that adapts well to parallel architectures. The authors present a comparison of EVP and VP dynamics model results from two 5-year simulations of Arctic sea ice, obtained with a high resolution sea ice model. The purpose of the comparison is to determine how differently the two dynamics models behave, and to decide whether the elastic-viscous-plastic model is preferable for high resolution climate simulations, considering its high efficiency in parallel computation. Results from the first year of this experiment (1990) are discussed in detail in Hunke and Zhang (1997).

High-resolution multi-slice PET

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yasillo, N.J.; Chintu Chen; Ordonez, C.E.; Kapp, O.H.; Sosnowski, J.; Beck, R.N.

1992-01-01

This report evaluates the progress to test the feasibility and to initiate the design of a high resolution multi-slice PET system. The following specific areas were evaluated: detector development and testing; electronics configuration and design; mechanical design; and system simulation. The design and construction of a multiple-slice, high-resolution positron tomograph will provide substantial improvements in the accuracy and reproducibility of measurements of the distribution of activity concentrations in the brain. The range of functional brain research and our understanding of local brain function will be greatly extended when the development of this instrumentation is completed

Quantifying the added value of convection-permitting climate simulations in complex terrain: a systematic evaluation of WRF over the Himalayas

Science.gov (United States)

Karki, Ramchandra; Hasson, Shabeh ul; Gerlitz, Lars; Schickhoff, Udo; Scholten, Thomas; Böhner, Jürgen

2017-07-01

Mesoscale dynamical refinements of global climate models or atmospheric reanalysis have shown their potential to resolve intricate atmospheric processes, their land surface interactions, and subsequently, realistic distribution of climatic fields in complex terrains. Given that such potential is yet to be explored within the central Himalayan region of Nepal, we investigate the skill of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with different spatial resolutions in reproducing the spatial, seasonal, and diurnal characteristics of the near-surface air temperature and precipitation as well as the spatial shifts in the diurnal monsoonal precipitation peak over the Khumbu (Everest), Rolwaling, and adjacent southern areas. Therefore, the ERA-Interim (0.75°) reanalysis has been dynamically refined to 25, 5, and 1 km (D1, D2, and D3) for one complete hydrological year (October 2014-September 2015), using the one-way nested WRF model run with mild nudging and parameterized convection for the outer but explicitly resolved convection for the inner domains. Our results suggest that D3 realistically reproduces the monsoonal precipitation, as compared to its underestimation by D1 but overestimation by D2. All three resolutions, however, overestimate precipitation from the westerly disturbances, owing to simulating anomalously higher intensity of few intermittent events. Temperatures are generally reproduced well by all resolutions; however, winter and pre-monsoon seasons feature a high cold bias for high elevations while lower elevations show a simultaneous warm bias. Unlike higher resolutions, D1 fails to realistically reproduce the regional-scale nocturnal monsoonal peak precipitation observed in the Himalayan foothills and its diurnal shift towards high elevations, whereas D2 resolves these characteristics but exhibits a limited skill in reproducing such a peak on the river valley scale due to the limited representation of the narrow valleys at 5 km resolution

Quantifying the added value of convection-permitting climate simulations in complex terrain: a systematic evaluation of WRF over the Himalayas

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

R. Karki

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Mesoscale dynamical refinements of global climate models or atmospheric reanalysis have shown their potential to resolve intricate atmospheric processes, their land surface interactions, and subsequently, realistic distribution of climatic fields in complex terrains. Given that such potential is yet to be explored within the central Himalayan region of Nepal, we investigate the skill of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF model with different spatial resolutions in reproducing the spatial, seasonal, and diurnal characteristics of the near-surface air temperature and precipitation as well as the spatial shifts in the diurnal monsoonal precipitation peak over the Khumbu (Everest, Rolwaling, and adjacent southern areas. Therefore, the ERA-Interim (0.75° reanalysis has been dynamically refined to 25, 5, and 1 km (D1, D2, and D3 for one complete hydrological year (October 2014–September 2015, using the one-way nested WRF model run with mild nudging and parameterized convection for the outer but explicitly resolved convection for the inner domains. Our results suggest that D3 realistically reproduces the monsoonal precipitation, as compared to its underestimation by D1 but overestimation by D2. All three resolutions, however, overestimate precipitation from the westerly disturbances, owing to simulating anomalously higher intensity of few intermittent events. Temperatures are generally reproduced well by all resolutions; however, winter and pre-monsoon seasons feature a high cold bias for high elevations while lower elevations show a simultaneous warm bias. Unlike higher resolutions, D1 fails to realistically reproduce the regional-scale nocturnal monsoonal peak precipitation observed in the Himalayan foothills and its diurnal shift towards high elevations, whereas D2 resolves these characteristics but exhibits a limited skill in reproducing such a peak on the river valley scale due to the limited representation of the narrow valleys at 5

The ACPI Climate Change Simulations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dai, A.; Washington, W.M.; Meehl, G.A.; Bettge, T.W.; Strand, W.G.

2004-01-01

The Parallel Climate Model (PCM) has been used in the Accelerated Climate Prediction Initiative (ACPI) Program to simulate the global climate response to projected CO2, sulfate, and other greenhouse gas forcing under a business-as-usual emissions scenario during the 21st century. In these runs, the oceans were initialized to 1995 conditions by a group from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and other institutions. An ensemble of three model runs was then carried out to the year 2099 using the projected forcing. Atmospheric data from these runs were saved at 6-hourly intervals (hourly for certain critical fields) to support the ACPI objective of accurately modeling hydrological cycles over the western U.S. It is shown that the initialization to 1995 conditions partly removes the un-forced oceanic temperature and salinity drifts that occurred in the standard 20th century integration. The ACPI runs show a global surface temperature increase of 3-8C over northern high-latitudes by the end of the 21st century, and 1-2C over the oceans. This is generally within ±0.1C of model runs without the 1995 ocean initialization. The exception is in the Antarctic circumpolar ocean where surface air temperature is cooler in the ACPI run; however the ensemble scatter is large in this region. Although the difference in climate at the end of the 21st century is minimal between the ACPI runs and traditionally spun up runs, it might be larger for CGCMs with higher climate sensitivity or larger ocean drifts. Our results suggest that the effect of small errors in the oceans (such as those associated with climate drifts) on CGCM-simulated climate changes for the next 50-100 years may be negligible

Simulated effects of climate change on the Death Valley regional ground-water flow system, Nevada and California

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

D'Agnese, F.A.; O'Brien, G.M.; Faunt, C.C.; San Juan, C.A.

1999-01-01

The US Geological Survey, in cooperation with the US Department of Energy, is evaluating the geologic and hydrologic characteristics of the Death Valley regional flow system as part of the Yucca Mountain Project. As part of the hydrologic investigation, regional, three-dimensional conceptual and numerical ground-water-flow models have been developed to assess the potential effects of past and future climates on the regional flow system. A simulation that is based on climatic conditions 21,000 years ago was evaluated by comparing the simulated results to observation of paleodischarge sites. Following acceptable simulation of a past climate, a possible future ground-water-flow system, with climatic conditions that represent a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, was simulated. The steady-state simulations were based on the present-day, steady-state, regional ground-water-flow model. The finite-difference model consisted of 163 rows, 153 columns, and 3 layers and was simulated using MODFLOWP. Climate changes were implemented in the regional ground-water-flow model by changing the distribution of ground-water recharge. Global-scale, average-annual, simulated precipitation for both past- and future-climate conditions developed elsewhere were resampled to the model-grid resolution. A polynomial function that represents the Maxey-Eakin method for estimating recharge from precipitation was used to develop recharge distributions for simulation

Vegetation and Carbon Cycle Dynamics in the High-Resolution Transient Holocene Simulations Using the MPI Earth System Model

Science.gov (United States)

Brovkin, V.; Lorenz, S.; Raddatz, T.; Claussen, M.; Dallmeyer, A.

2017-12-01

-scale variability helps to quantify the vegetation and land carbon feedbacks during the past periods when the temporal resolution of the ice-core CO2 record is not sufficient to capture fast CO2 variations. From a set of Holocene simulations with prescribed or interactive atmospheric CO2, we get estimates of climate-carbon feedback useful for future climate studies.

Computer simulations of the atmospheric composition climate of Bulgaria

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gadzhev, G.; Ganev, K.; Syrkov, D.; Prodanova, M.; Georgieva, I.; Georgiev, G.

2015-07-01

Some extensive numerical simulations of the atmospheric composition fields in Bulgaria have been recently performed. The US EPA Model-3 system was chosen as a modelling tool. As the NCEP Global Analysis Data with 1 degree resolution was used as meteorological background, the MM5 and CMAQ nesting capabilities were applied for downscaling the simulations to a 3 km resolution over Bulgaria. The TNO emission inventory was used as emission input. Special pre-processing procedures are created for introducing temporal profiles and speciation of the emissions. The biogenic emissions of VOC are estimated by the model SMOKE. The simulations were carried out for years 2000-2007. The numerical experiments have been carried out for different emission scenarios, which makes it possible the contribution of emissions from different source categories to be evaluated. The Models-3 “Integrated Process Rate Analysis” option is applied to discriminate the role of different dynamic and chemical processes for the air pollution formation. The obtained ensemble of numerical simulation results is extensive enough to allow statistical treatment – calculating not only the mean concentrations and different source categories contribution mean fields, but also standard deviations, skewness, etc. with their dominant temporal modes (seasonal and/or diurnal variations). Thus some basic facts about the atmospheric composition climate of Bulgaria can be retrieved from the simulation ensemble. (Author)

Computer simulations of the atmospheric composition climate of Bulgaria

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gadzhev, G.; Ganev, K.; Syrakov, D.; Prodanova, M.; Georgieva, I.; Georgiev, G.

2015-07-01

Some extensive numerical simulations of the atmospheric composition fields in Bulgaria have been recently performed. The US EPA Model-3 system was chosen as a modelling tool. As the NCEP Global Analysis Data with 1 degree resolution was used as meteorological background, the MM5 and CMAQ nesting capabilities were applied for downscaling the simulations to a 3 km resolution over Bulgaria. The TNO emission inventory was used as emission input. Special pre-processing procedures are created for introducing temporal profiles and speciation of the emissions. The biogenic emissions of VOC are estimated by the model SMOKE. The simulations were carried out for years 2000-2007. The numerical experiments have been carried out for different emission scenarios, which makes it possible the contribution of emissions from different source categories to be evaluated. The Models-3 Integrated Process Rate Analysis option is applied to discriminate the role of different dynamic and chemical processes for the air pollution formation. The obtained ensemble of numerical simulation results is extensive enough to allow statistical treatment calculating not only the mean concentrations and different source categories contribution mean fields, but also standard deviations, skewness, etc. with their dominant temporal modes (seasonal and/or diurnal variations). Thus some basic facts about the atmospheric composition climate of Bulgaria can be retrieved from the simulation ensemble. (Author)

Objective Tuning of Model Parameters in CAM5 Across Different Spatial Resolutions

Science.gov (United States)

Bulaevskaya, V.; Lucas, D. D.

2014-12-01

Parameterizations of physical processes in climate models are highly dependent on the spatial and temporal resolution and must be tuned for each resolution under consideration. At high spatial resolutions, objective methods for parameter tuning are computationally prohibitive. Our work has focused on calibrating parameters in the Community Atmosphere Model 5 (CAM5) for three spatial resolutions: 1, 2, and 4 degrees. Using perturbed-parameter ensembles and uncertainty quantification methodology, we have identified input parameters that minimize discrepancies of energy fluxes simulated by CAM5 across the three resolutions and with respect to satellite observations. We are also beginning to exploit the parameter-resolution relationships to objectively tune parameters in a high-resolution version of CAM5 by leveraging cheaper, low-resolution simulations and statistical models. We will present our approach to multi-resolution climate model parameter tuning, as well as the key findings. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344 and was supported from the DOE Office of Science through the Scientific Discovery Through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) project on Multiscale Methods for Accurate, Efficient, and Scale-Aware Models of the Earth System.

A climate analysis using CORDEX simulations in a cooperation framework: the case of Paraguay

Science.gov (United States)

Mercogliano, Paola; Bucchignani, Edoardo; Ciervo, Fabio; Montesarchio, Myriam; Zollo, Alessandra Lucia; Villani, Veronica; Barbato, Giuliana; Vendemia, Rosalba; Polato, Raul; Baez, Julian; Pasten, Max

2017-04-01

In recent years, changes in climate have entailed variations in surface temperature and precipitation patterns in various countries of the South America, among which Paraguay. Climate change-attributed effects on weather impacts, such as river and urban floods, droughts and heat waves could severely affect the actual conditions of the country. In fact, Paraguay exhibits significant vulnerabilities to climate changes, especially because of its dependence on commodities production (e.g. agriculture, livestock, etc.) and its infrastructural and logistic asset not yet fully formed. In this context, climate change analysis can be an important technical support for practitioners to assist - under uncertainty - national/regional planning, financial resources managing and development (e.g. land-use practices, population growth, economic and community behavior, health, etc.). Moreover, actions in adaptation, disaster risk reduction (DRR), social protection and impacts mitigation may involve high costs if not properly contextualized. The assessment of 21st century climate change and development of whatever response strategies requires climate scenarios at high resolution, including an accurate evaluation of projection uncertainties (i.e. robustness of the analysis). This should ensure adequate insights into the potential impacts of climate change and allow practitioners, usually ill equipped to consider uncertain climate outputs into a broader context (e.g. planning, designing, managing), to make appropriate choices. In the framework of CORDEX initiative, Paraguay is included into the SOUTH-AMERICA-CORDEX one. Three climate simulations over this area are available at the spatial resolution of 0.44° (about 50km), obtained with RCM SMHI-RCA4 (forced by GCMs ICHEC-EC-EARTH and MPI-M-MPI-ESM-LR) and RCM MPI-CSC-REMO2009 (forced by MPI-M-MPI-ESM-LR). Simulations over the 21st century have been performed according with IPCC RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. The plausibility of

Estimation of the high-spatial-resolution variability in extreme wind speeds for forestry applications

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A. Venäläinen

2017-07-01

Full Text Available The bioeconomy has an increasing role to play in climate change mitigation and the sustainable development of national economies. In Finland, a forested country, over 50 % of the current bioeconomy relies on the sustainable management and utilization of forest resources. Wind storms are a major risk that forests are exposed to and high-spatial-resolution analysis of the most vulnerable locations can produce risk assessment of forest management planning. In this paper, we examine the feasibility of the wind multiplier approach for downscaling of maximum wind speed, using 20 m spatial resolution CORINE land-use dataset and high-resolution digital elevation data. A coarse spatial resolution estimate of the 10-year return level of maximum wind speed was obtained from the ERA-Interim reanalyzed data. Using a geospatial re-mapping technique the data were downscaled to 26 meteorological station locations to represent very diverse environments. Applying a comparison, we find that the downscaled 10-year return levels represent 66 % of the observed variation among the stations examined. In addition, the spatial variation in wind-multiplier-downscaled 10-year return level wind was compared with the WAsP model-simulated wind. The heterogeneous test area was situated in northern Finland, and it was found that the major features of the spatial variation were similar, but in some locations, there were relatively large differences. The results indicate that the wind multiplier method offers a pragmatic and computationally feasible tool for identifying at a high spatial resolution those locations with the highest forest wind damage risks. It can also be used to provide the necessary wind climate information for wind damage risk model calculations, thus making it possible to estimate the probability of predicted threshold wind speeds for wind damage and consequently the probability (and amount of wind damage for certain forest stand configurations.

Evaluating Climate Causation of Conflict in Darfur Using Multi-temporal, Multi-resolution Satellite Image Datasets With Novel Analyses

Science.gov (United States)

Brown, I.; Wennbom, M.

2013-12-01

Climate change, population growth and changes in traditional lifestyles have led to instabilities in traditional demarcations between neighboring ethic and religious groups in the Sahel region. This has resulted in a number of conflicts as groups resort to arms to settle disputes. Such disputes often centre on or are justified by competition for resources. The conflict in Darfur has been controversially explained by resource scarcity resulting from climate change. Here we analyse established methods of using satellite imagery to assess vegetation health in Darfur. Multi-decadal time series of observations are available using low spatial resolution visible-near infrared imagery. Typically normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) analyses are produced to describe changes in vegetation ';greenness' or ';health'. Such approaches have been widely used to evaluate the long term development of vegetation in relation to climate variations across a wide range of environments from the Arctic to the Sahel. These datasets typically measure peak NDVI observed over a given interval and may introduce bias. It is furthermore unclear how the spatial organization of sparse vegetation may affect low resolution NDVI products. We develop and assess alternative measures of vegetation including descriptors of the growing season, wetness and resource availability. Expanding the range of parameters used in the analysis reduces our dependence on peak NDVI. Furthermore, these descriptors provide a better characterization of the growing season than the single NDVI measure. Using multi-sensor data we combine high temporal/moderate spatial resolution data with low temporal/high spatial resolution data to improve the spatial representativity of the observations and to provide improved spatial analysis of vegetation patterns. The approach places the high resolution observations in the NDVI context space using a longer time series of lower resolution imagery. The vegetation descriptors

Changes in the convective population and thermodynamic environments in convection-permitting regional climate simulations over the United States

Science.gov (United States)

Rasmussen, K. L.; Prein, A. F.; Rasmussen, R. M.; Ikeda, K.; Liu, C.

2017-11-01

Novel high-resolution convection-permitting regional climate simulations over the US employing the pseudo-global warming approach are used to investigate changes in the convective population and thermodynamic environments in a future climate. Two continuous 13-year simulations were conducted using (1) ERA-Interim reanalysis and (2) ERA-Interim reanalysis plus a climate perturbation for the RCP8.5 scenario. The simulations adequately reproduce the observed precipitation diurnal cycle, indicating that they capture organized and propagating convection that most climate models cannot adequately represent. This study shows that weak to moderate convection will decrease and strong convection will increase in frequency in a future climate. Analysis of the thermodynamic environments supporting convection shows that both convective available potential energy (CAPE) and convective inhibition (CIN) increase downstream of the Rockies in a future climate. Previous studies suggest that CAPE will increase in a warming climate, however a corresponding increase in CIN acts as a balancing force to shift the convective population by suppressing weak to moderate convection and provides an environment where CAPE can build to extreme levels that may result in more frequent severe convection. An idealized investigation of fundamental changes in the thermodynamic environment was conducted by shifting a standard atmospheric profile by ± 5 °C. When temperature is increased, both CAPE and CIN increase in magnitude, while the opposite is true for decreased temperatures. Thus, even in the absence of synoptic and mesoscale variations, a warmer climate will provide more CAPE and CIN that will shift the convective population, likely impacting water and energy budgets on Earth.

Evaluating adaptation options for urban flooding based on new high-end emission scenario regional climate model simulations

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Arnbjerg-Nielsen, Karsten; Leonardsen, L.; Madsen, Henrik

2015-01-01

Climate change adaptation studies on urban flooding are often based on a model chain approach from climate forcing scenarios to analysis of adaptation measures. Previous analyses of climate change impacts in Copenhagen, Denmark, were supplemented by 2 high-end scenario simulations. These include...... a regional climate model projection forced to a global temperature increase of 6 degrees C in 2100 as well as a projection based on a high radiative forcing scenario (RCP8.5). With these scenarios, projected impacts of extreme precipitation increase significantly. For extreme sea surges, the impacts do...... by almost 4 and 8 times the current EAD for the RCP8.5 and 6 degrees C scenario, respectively. For both hazards, business-as-usual is not a possible scenario, since even in the absence of policy-driven changes, significant autonomous adaptation is likely to occur. Copenhagen has developed an adaptation plan...

The implementation of sea ice model on a regional high-resolution scale

Science.gov (United States)

Prasad, Siva; Zakharov, Igor; Bobby, Pradeep; McGuire, Peter

2015-09-01

The availability of high-resolution atmospheric/ocean forecast models, satellite data and access to high-performance computing clusters have provided capability to build high-resolution models for regional ice condition simulation. The paper describes the implementation of the Los Alamos sea ice model (CICE) on a regional scale at high resolution. The advantage of the model is its ability to include oceanographic parameters (e.g., currents) to provide accurate results. The sea ice simulation was performed over Baffin Bay and the Labrador Sea to retrieve important parameters such as ice concentration, thickness, ridging, and drift. Two different forcing models, one with low resolution and another with a high resolution, were used for the estimation of sensitivity of model results. Sea ice behavior over 7 years was simulated to analyze ice formation, melting, and conditions in the region. Validation was based on comparing model results with remote sensing data. The simulated ice concentration correlated well with Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) and Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility (OSI-SAF) data. Visual comparison of ice thickness trends estimated from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite (SMOS) agreed with the simulation for year 2010-2011.

Global-Scale Associations of Vegetation Phenology with Rainfall and Temperature at a High Spatio-Temporal Resolution

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nicholas Clinton

2014-08-01

Full Text Available Phenology response to climatic variables is a vital indicator for understanding changes in biosphere processes as related to possible climate change. We investigated global phenology relationships to precipitation and land surface temperature (LST at high spatial and temporal resolution for calendar years 2008–2011. We used cross-correlation between MODIS Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI, MODIS LST and Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN gridded rainfall to map phenology relationships at 1-km spatial resolution and weekly temporal resolution. We show these data to be rich in spatiotemporal information, illustrating distinct phenology patterns as a result of complex overlapping gradients of climate, ecosystem and land use/land cover. The data are consistent with broad-scale, coarse-resolution modeled ecosystem limitations to moisture, temperature and irradiance. We suggest that high-resolution phenology data are useful as both an input and complement to land use/land cover classifiers and for understanding climate change vulnerability in natural and anthropogenic landscapes.

Climate Modeling: Ocean Cavities below Ice Shelves

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Petersen, Mark Roger [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States). Computer, Computational, and Statistical Sciences Division

2016-09-12

The Accelerated Climate Model for Energy (ACME), a new initiative by the U.S. Department of Energy, includes unstructured-mesh ocean, land-ice, and sea-ice components using the Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) framework. The ability to run coupled high-resolution global simulations efficiently on large, high-performance computers is a priority for ACME. Sub-ice shelf ocean cavities are a significant new capability in ACME, and will be used to better understand how changing ocean temperature and currents influence glacial melting and retreat. These simulations take advantage of the horizontal variable-resolution mesh and adaptive vertical coordinate in MPAS-Ocean, in order to place high resolution below ice shelves and near grounding lines.

Simulation of the oxidation pathway on Si(100) using high-resolution EELS

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hogan, Conor [Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Struttura della Materia (CNR-ISM), Rome (Italy); Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita di Roma ' ' Tor Vergata' ' , Roma (Italy); European Theoretical Spectroscopy Facility (ETSF), Roma (Italy); Caramella, Lucia; Onida, Giovanni [Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita degli Studi di Milano (Italy); European Theoretical Spectroscopy Facility (ETSF), Milano (Italy)

2012-06-15

We compute high-resolution electron energy loss spectra (HREELS) of possible structural motifs that form during the dynamic oxidation process on Si(100), including the important metastable precursor silanone and an adjacent-dimer bridge (ADB) structure that may seed oxide formation. Spectroscopic fingerprints of single site, silanone, and ''seed'' structures are identified and related to changes in the surface bandstructure of the clean surface. Incorporation of oxygen into the silicon lattice through adsorption and dissociation of water is also examined. Results are compared to available HREELS spectra and surface optical data, which are closely related. Our simulations confirm that HREELS offers complementary evidence to surface optical spectroscopy, and show that its high sensitivity allows it to distinguish between energetically and structurally similar oxidation models. (Copyright copyright 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH and Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Collaborative Proposal: Transforming How Climate System Models are Used: A Global, Multi-Resolution Approach

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Estep, Donald

2013-04-15

Despite the great interest in regional modeling for both weather and climate applications, regional modeling is not yet at the stage that it can be used routinely and effectively for climate modeling of the ocean. The overarching goal of this project is to transform how climate models are used by developing and implementing a robust, efficient, and accurate global approach to regional ocean modeling. To achieve this goal, we will use theoretical and computational means to resolve several basic modeling and algorithmic issues. The first task is to develop techniques for transitioning between parameterized and high-fidelity regional ocean models as the discretization grid transitions from coarse to fine regions. The second task is to develop estimates for the error in scientifically relevant quantities of interest that provide a systematic way to automatically determine where refinement is needed in order to obtain accurate simulations of dynamic and tracer transport in regional ocean models. The third task is to develop efficient, accurate, and robust time-stepping schemes for variable spatial resolution discretizations used in regional ocean models of dynamics and tracer transport. The fourth task is to develop frequency-dependent eddy viscosity finite element and discontinuous Galerkin methods and study their performance and effectiveness for simulation of dynamics and tracer transport in regional ocean models. These four projects share common difficulties and will be approach using a common computational and mathematical toolbox. This is a multidisciplinary project involving faculty and postdocs from Colorado State University, Florida State University, and Penn State University along with scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The completion of the tasks listed within the discussion of the four sub-projects will go a long way towards meeting our goal of developing superior regional ocean models that will transform how climate system models are used.

An Estimation of the Climatic Effects of Stratospheric Ozone Losses during the 1980s. Appendix K

Science.gov (United States)

MacKay, Robert M.; Ko, Malcolm K. W.; Shia, Run-Lie; Yang, Yajaing; Zhou, Shuntai; Molnar, Gyula

1997-01-01

In order to study the potential climatic effects of the ozone hole more directly and to assess the validity of previous lower resolution model results, the latest high spatial resolution version of the Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc., seasonal radiative dynamical climate model is used to simulate the climatic effects of ozone changes relative to the other greenhouse gases. The steady-state climatic effect of a sustained decrease in lower stratospheric ozone, similar in magnitude to the observed 1979-90 decrease, is estimated by comparing three steady-state climate simulations: 1) 1979 greenhouse gas concentrations and 1979 ozone, II) 1990 greenhouse gas concentrations with 1979 ozone, and III) 1990 greenhouse gas concentrations with 1990 ozone. The simulated increase in surface air temperature resulting from nonozone greenhouse gases is 0.272 K. When changes in lower stratospheric ozone are included, the greenhouse warming is 0.165 K, which is approximately 39% lower than when ozone is fixed at the 1979 concentrations. Ozone perturbations at high latitudes result in a cooling of the surface-troposphere system that is greater (by a factor of 2.8) than that estimated from the change in radiative forcing resulting from ozone depiction and the model's 2 x CO, climate sensitivity. The results suggest that changes in meridional heat transport from low to high latitudes combined with the decrease in the infrared opacity of the lower stratosphere are very important in determining the steady-state response to high latitude ozone losses. The 39% compensation in greenhouse warming resulting from lower stratospheric ozone losses is also larger than the 28% compensation simulated previously by the lower resolution model. The higher resolution model is able to resolve the high latitude features of the assumed ozone perturbation, which are important in determining the overall climate sensitivity to these perturbations.

Collaborative Research: Towards Advanced Understanding and Predictive Capability of Climate Change in the Arctic Using a High-Resolution Regional Arctic Climate Model

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Cassano, John [Principal Investigator

2013-06-30

The primary research task completed for this project was the development of the Regional Arctic Climate Model (RACM). This involved coupling existing atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, and land models using the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Climate System Model (CCSM) coupler (CPL7). RACM is based on the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) atmospheric model, the Parallel Ocean Program (POP) ocean model, the CICE sea ice model, and the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) land model. A secondary research task for this project was testing and evaluation of WRF for climate-scale simulations on the large pan-Arctic model domain used in RACM. This involved identification of a preferred set of model physical parameterizations for use in our coupled RACM simulations and documenting any atmospheric biases present in RACM.

Detailed climate-change projections for urban land-use change and green-house gas increases for Belgium with COSMO-CLM coupled to TERRA_URB

Science.gov (United States)

Wouters, Hendrik; Vanden Broucke, Sam; van Lipzig, Nicole; Demuzere, Matthias

2016-04-01

Recent research clearly show that climate modelling at high resolution - which resolve the deep convection, the detailed orography and land-use including urbanization - leads to better modelling performance with respect to temperatures, the boundary-layer, clouds and precipitation. The increasing computational power enables the climate research community to address climate-change projections with higher accuracy and much more detail. In the framework of the CORDEX.be project aiming for coherent high-resolution micro-ensemble projections for Belgium employing different GCMs and RCMs, the KU Leuven contributes by means of the downscaling of EC-EARTH global climate model projections (provided by the Royal Meteorological Institute of the Netherlands) to the Belgian domain. The downscaling is obtained with regional climate simulations at 12.5km resolution over Europe (CORDEX-EU domain) and at 2.8km resolution over Belgium (CORDEX.be domain) using COSMO-CLM coupled to urban land-surface parametrization TERRA_URB. This is done for the present-day (1975-2005) and future (2040 → 2070 and 2070 → 2100). In these high-resolution runs, both GHG changes (in accordance to RCP8.5) and urban land-use changes (in accordance to a business-as-usual urban expansion scenario) are taken into account. Based on these simulations, it is shown how climate-change statistics are modified when going from coarse resolution modelling to high-resolution modelling. The climate-change statistics of particular interest are the changes in number of extreme precipitation events and extreme heat waves in cities. Hereby, it is futher investigated for the robustness of the signal change between the course and high-resolution and whether a (statistical) translation is possible. The different simulations also allow to address the relative impact and synergy between the urban expansion and increased GHG on the climate-change statistics. Hereby, it is investigated for which climate-change statistics the

Application of multi-scale wavelet entropy and multi-resolution Volterra models for climatic downscaling

Science.gov (United States)

Sehgal, V.; Lakhanpal, A.; Maheswaran, R.; Khosa, R.; Sridhar, Venkataramana

2018-01-01

This study proposes a wavelet-based multi-resolution modeling approach for statistical downscaling of GCM variables to mean monthly precipitation for five locations at Krishna Basin, India. Climatic dataset from NCEP is used for training the proposed models (Jan.'69 to Dec.'94) and are applied to corresponding CanCM4 GCM variables to simulate precipitation for the validation (Jan.'95-Dec.'05) and forecast (Jan.'06-Dec.'35) periods. The observed precipitation data is obtained from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) gridded precipitation product at 0.25 degree spatial resolution. This paper proposes a novel Multi-Scale Wavelet Entropy (MWE) based approach for clustering climatic variables into suitable clusters using k-means methodology. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is used to obtain the representative Principal Components (PC) explaining 90-95% variance for each cluster. A multi-resolution non-linear approach combining Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Second Order Volterra (SoV) is used to model the representative PCs to obtain the downscaled precipitation for each downscaling location (W-P-SoV model). The results establish that wavelet-based multi-resolution SoV models perform significantly better compared to the traditional Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) based frameworks. It is observed that the proposed MWE-based clustering and subsequent PCA, helps reduce the dimensionality of the input climatic variables, while capturing more variability compared to stand-alone k-means (no MWE). The proposed models perform better in estimating the number of precipitation events during the non-monsoon periods whereas the models with clustering without MWE over-estimate the rainfall during the dry season.

Simulating Hydrologic Changes with Climate Change Scenarios in the Haihe River Basin

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

YUAN Fei; XIE Zheng-Hui; LIU Qian; XIA Jun

2005-01-01

Climate change scenarios, predicted using the regional climate modeling system of PRECIS (providing regional climates for impacts studies), were used to derive three-layer variable infiltration capacity (VIC-3L) land surface model for the simulation of hydrologic processes at a spatial resolution of 0.25°× 0.25° in the Haihe River Basin. Three climate scenaxios were considered in this study: recent climate (1961-1990), future climate A2 (1991-2100) and future climate B2 (1991-2100) with A2 and B2 being two storylines of future emissions developed with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on emissions scenarios. Overall, under future climate scenarios A2 and B2, the Haihe River Basin would experience warmer climate with increased precipitation, evaporation and runoff production as compared with recent climate, but would be still likely prone to water shortages in the period of 2031-2070. In addition,under future climate A2 and B2, an increase in runoff during the wet season was noticed, indicating a future rise in the flood occurrence possibility in the Haihe River Basin.

FY08 LDRD Final Report Regional Climate

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Bader, D C; Chin, H; Caldwell, P M

2009-05-19

An integrated, multi-model capability for regional climate change simulation is needed to perform original analyses to understand and prepare for the impacts of climate change on the time and space scales that are critical to California's future environmental quality and economic prosperity. Our intent was to develop a very high resolution regional simulation capability to address consequences of climate change in California to complement the global modeling capability that is supported by DOE at LLNL and other institutions to inform national and international energy policies. The California state government, through the California Energy Commission (CEC), institutionalized the State's climate change assessment process through its biennial climate change reports. The bases for these reports, however, are global climate change simulations for future scenarios designed to inform international policy negotiations, and are primarily focused on the global to continental scale impacts of increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. These simulations do not meet the needs of California public and private officials who will make major decisions in the next decade that require an understanding of climate change in California for the next thirty to fifty years and its effects on energy use, water utilization, air quality, agriculture and natural ecosystems. With the additional development of regional dynamical climate modeling capability, LLNL will be able to design and execute global simulations specifically for scenarios important to the state, then use those results to drive regional simulations of the impacts of the simulated climate change for regions as small as individual cities or watersheds. Through this project, we systematically studied the strengths and weaknesses of downscaling global model results with a regional mesoscale model to guide others, particularly university researchers, who are using the technique based on models with less complete

High resolution estimates of the corrosion risk for cultural heritage in Italy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

De Marco, Alessandra; Screpanti, Augusto; Mircea, Mihaela; Piersanti, Antonio; Proietti, Chiara; Fornasier, M. Francesca

2017-01-01

Air pollution plays a pivotal role in the deterioration of many materials used in buildings and cultural monuments causing an inestimable damage. This study aims to estimate the impacts of air pollution (SO 2 , HNO 3 , O 3 , PM 10 ) and meteorological conditions (temperature, precipitation, relative humidity) on limestone, copper and bronze based on high resolution air quality data-base produced with AMS-MINNI modelling system over the Italian territory over the time period 2003–2010. A comparison between high resolution data (AMS-MINNI grid, 4 × 4 km) and low resolution data (EMEP grid, 50 × 50 km) has been performed. Our results pointed out that the corrosion levels for limestone, copper and bronze are decreased in Italy from 2003 to 2010 in relation to decrease of pollutant concentrations. However, some problem related to air pollution persists especially in Northern and Southern Italy. In particular, PM 10 and HNO 3 are considered the main responsible for limestone corrosion. Moreover, the high resolution data (AMS-MINNI) allowed the identification of risk areas that are not visible with the low resolution data (EMEP modelling system) in all considered years and, especially, in the limestone case. Consequently, high resolution air quality simulations are suitable to provide concrete benefits in providing information for national effective policy against corrosion risk for cultural heritage, also in the context of climate changes that are affecting strongly Mediterranean basin. - Highlights: • Air pollution plays a pivotal role in the deterioration of cultural materials. • Limestone, copper and bronze corrosion levels decreased in Italy from 2003 to 2010. • PM 10 is considered the main responsible for limestone corrosion in Northern Italy. • HNO3 is considered the main responsible for limestone corrosion in all analyzed years. • High-resolution data are particularly useful to define area at risk for corrosion. - Importance of the high-resolution

Simulating the Pineapple Express in the half degree Community Climate System Model, CCSM4

Science.gov (United States)

Shields, Christine A.; Kiehl, Jeffrey T.

2016-07-01

Atmospheric rivers are recognized as major contributors to the poleward transport of water vapor. Upon reaching land, these phenomena also play a critical role in extreme precipitation and flooding events. The Pineapple Express (PE) is defined as an atmospheric river extending out of the deep tropics and reaching the west coast of North America. Community Climate System Model (CCSM4) high-resolution ensemble simulations for the twentieth and 21st centuries are diagnosed to identify the PE. Analysis of the twentieth century simulations indicated that the CCSM4 accurately captures the spatial and temporal climatology of the PE. Analysis of the end 21st century simulations indicates a significant increase in storm duration and intensity of precipitation associated with landfall of the PE. Only a modest increase in the number of atmospheric rivers of a few percent is projected for the end of 21st century.

High resolution modelling of extreme precipitation events in urban areas

Science.gov (United States)

Siemerink, Martijn; Volp, Nicolette; Schuurmans, Wytze; Deckers, Dave

2015-04-01

The present day society needs to adjust to the effects of climate change. More extreme weather conditions are expected, which can lead to longer periods of drought, but also to more extreme precipitation events. Urban water systems are not designed for such extreme events. Most sewer systems are not able to drain the excessive storm water, causing urban flooding. This leads to high economic damage. In order to take appropriate measures against extreme urban storms, detailed knowledge about the behaviour of the urban water system above and below the streets is required. To investigate the behaviour of urban water systems during extreme precipitation events new assessment tools are necessary. These tools should provide a detailed and integral description of the flow in the full domain of overland runoff, sewer flow, surface water flow and groundwater flow. We developed a new assessment tool, called 3Di, which provides detailed insight in the urban water system. This tool is based on a new numerical methodology that can accurately deal with the interaction between overland runoff, sewer flow and surface water flow. A one-dimensional model for the sewer system and open channel flow is fully coupled to a two-dimensional depth-averaged model that simulates the overland flow. The tool uses a subgrid-based approach in order to take high resolution information of the sewer system and of the terrain into account [1, 2]. The combination of using the high resolution information and the subgrid based approach results in an accurate and efficient modelling tool. It is now possible to simulate entire urban water systems using extreme high resolution (0.5m x 0.5m) terrain data in combination with a detailed sewer and surface water network representation. The new tool has been tested in several Dutch cities, such as Rotterdam, Amsterdam and The Hague. We will present the results of an extreme precipitation event in the city of Schiedam (The Netherlands). This city deals with

Toward Improving Predictability of Extreme Hydrometeorological Events: the Use of Multi-scale Climate Modeling in the Northern High Plains

Science.gov (United States)

Munoz-Arriola, F.; Torres-Alavez, J.; Mohamad Abadi, A.; Walko, R. L.

2014-12-01

Our goal is to investigate possible sources of predictability of hydrometeorological extreme events in the Northern High Plains. Hydrometeorological extreme events are considered the most costly natural phenomena. Water deficits and surpluses highlight how the water-climate interdependence becomes crucial in areas where single activities drive economies such as Agriculture in the NHP. Nonetheless we recognize the Water-Climate interdependence and the regulatory role that human activities play, we still grapple to identify what sources of predictability could be added to flood and drought forecasts. To identify the benefit of multi-scale climate modeling and the role of initial conditions on flood and drought predictability on the NHP, we use the Ocean Land Atmospheric Model (OLAM). OLAM is characterized by a dynamic core with a global geodesic grid with hexagonal (and variably refined) mesh cells and a finite volume discretization of the full compressible Navier Stokes equations, a cut-grid cell method for topography (that reduces error in computational gradient computation and anomalous vertical dispersion). Our hypothesis is that wet conditions will drive OLAM's simulations of precipitation to wetter conditions affecting both flood forecast and drought forecast. To test this hypothesis we simulate precipitation during identified historical flood events followed by drought events in the NHP (i.e. 2011-2012 years). We initialized OLAM with CFS-data 1-10 days previous to a flooding event (as initial conditions) to explore (1) short-term and high-resolution and (2) long-term and coarse-resolution simulations of flood and drought events, respectively. While floods are assessed during a maximum of 15-days refined-mesh simulations, drought is evaluated during the following 15 months. Simulated precipitation will be compared with the Sub-continental Observation Dataset, a gridded 1/16th degree resolution data obtained from climatological stations in Canada, US, and

Simulating return signals of a spaceborne high-spectral resolution lidar channel at 532 nm

Science.gov (United States)

Xiao, Yu; Binglong, Chen; Min, Min; Xingying, Zhang; Lilin, Yao; Yiming, Zhao; Lidong, Wang; Fu, Wang; Xiaobo, Deng

2018-06-01

High spectral resolution lidar (HSRL) system employs a narrow spectral filter to separate the particulate (cloud/aerosol) and molecular scattering components in lidar return signals, which improves the quality of the retrieved cloud/aerosol optical properties. To better develop a future spaceborne HSRL system, a novel simulation technique was developed to simulate spaceborne HSRL return signals at 532 nm using the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) cloud/aerosol extinction coefficients product and numerical weather prediction data. For validating simulated data, a mathematical particulate extinction coefficient retrieval method for spaceborne HSRL return signals is described here. We compare particulate extinction coefficient profiles from the CALIPSO operational product with simulated spaceborne HSRL data. Further uncertainty analysis shows that relative uncertainties are acceptable for retrieving the optical properties of cloud and aerosol. The final results demonstrate that they agree well with each other. It indicates that the return signals of the spaceborne HSRL molecular channel at 532 nm will be suitable for developing operational algorithms supporting a future spaceborne HSRL system.

The physics and dynamics of the climate system simulation of climate change

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Mitchell, J.F.B.

1991-01-01

The use of climate models is described, using examples related to: the greenhouse effect, the principal absorbers, past, present and future, climate feedbacks in CO2 experiments, equilibrium climate change due to increased CO2, modelling the transient response to increases in trace gases, uncertainties in the simulation and detection of the climatic effect of increased trace gas, simulations for 9000 years before present

Emulation of long-term changes in global climate: Application to the late Pliocene and future

KAUST Repository

Lord, Natalie S.

2017-04-26

Multi-millennial transient simulations of climate changes have a range of important applications, such as for investigating key geologic events and transitions for which high-resolution palaeoenvironmental proxy data are available, or for projecting the long-term impacts of future climate evolution on the performance of geological repositories for the disposal of radioactive wastes. However, due to the high computational requirements of current fully coupled general circulation models (GCMs), long-term simulations can generally only be performed with less complex models and/or at lower spatial resolution. In this study, we present novel long-term

Emulation of long-term changes in global climate: application to the late Pliocene and future

KAUST Repository

Lord, Natalie S.

2017-11-16

Multi-millennial transient simulations of climate changes have a range of important applications, such as for investigating key geologic events and transitions for which high-resolution palaeoenvironmental proxy data are available, or for projecting the long-term impacts of future climate evolution on the performance of geological repositories for the disposal of radioactive wastes. However, due to the high computational requirements of current fully coupled general circulation models (GCMs), long-term simulations can generally only be performed with less complex models and/or at lower spatial resolution. In this study, we present novel long-term

Emulation of long-term changes in global climate: application to the late Pliocene and future

KAUST Repository

Lord, Natalie S.; Crucifix, Michel; Lunt, Dan J.; Thorne, Mike C.; Bounceur, Nabila; Dowsett, Harry; O& apos; Brien, Charlotte L.; Ridgwell, Andy

2017-01-01

Multi-millennial transient simulations of climate changes have a range of important applications, such as for investigating key geologic events and transitions for which high-resolution palaeoenvironmental proxy data are available, or for projecting the long-term impacts of future climate evolution on the performance of geological repositories for the disposal of radioactive wastes. However, due to the high computational requirements of current fully coupled general circulation models (GCMs), long-term simulations can generally only be performed with less complex models and/or at lower spatial resolution. In this study, we present novel long-term

Emulation of long-term changes in global climate: Application to the late Pliocene and future

KAUST Repository

Lord, Natalie S.; Crucifix, Michel; Lunt, Dan J.; Thorne, Mike C.; Bounceur, Nabila; Dowsett, Harry; O& apos; Brien, Charlotte L.; Ridgwell, Andy

2017-01-01

Multi-millennial transient simulations of climate changes have a range of important applications, such as for investigating key geologic events and transitions for which high-resolution palaeoenvironmental proxy data are available, or for projecting the long-term impacts of future climate evolution on the performance of geological repositories for the disposal of radioactive wastes. However, due to the high computational requirements of current fully coupled general circulation models (GCMs), long-term simulations can generally only be performed with less complex models and/or at lower spatial resolution. In this study, we present novel long-term

Assessment of CMIP5 historical simulations of rainfall over Southeast Asia

Science.gov (United States)

Raghavan, Srivatsan V.; Liu, Jiandong; Nguyen, Ngoc Son; Vu, Minh Tue; Liong, Shie-Yui

2018-05-01

We present preliminary analyses of the historical (1986-2005) climate simulations of a ten-member subset of the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) global climate models over Southeast Asia. The objective of this study was to evaluate the general circulation models' performance in simulating the mean state of climate over this less-studied climate vulnerable region, with a focus on precipitation. Results indicate that most of the models are unable to reproduce the observed state of climate over Southeast Asia. Though the multi-model ensemble mean is a better representation of the observations, the uncertainties in the individual models are far high. There is no particular model that performed well in simulating the historical climate of Southeast Asia. There seems to be no significant influence of the spatial resolutions of the models on the quality of simulation, despite the view that higher resolution models fare better. The study results emphasize on careful consideration of models for impact studies and the need to improve the next generation of models in their ability to simulate regional climates better.

Quantifying uncertainty in Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation - A high resolution simulation study in ICBM space.

Science.gov (United States)

Toschi, Nicola; Keck, Martin E; Welt, Tobias; Guerrisi, Maria

2012-01-01

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation offers enormous potential for noninvasive brain stimulation. While it is known that brain tissue significantly "reshapes" induced field and charge distributions, most modeling investigations to-date have focused on single-subject data with limited generality. Further, the effects of the significant uncertainties which exist in the simulation (i.e. brain conductivity distributions) and stimulation (e.g. coil positioning and orientations) setup have not been quantified. In this study, we construct a high-resolution anisotropic head model in standard ICBM space, which can be used as a population-representative standard for bioelectromagnetic simulations. Further, we employ Monte-Carlo simulations in order to quantify how uncertainties in conductivity values propagate all the way to induced field and currents, demonstrating significant, regionally dependent dispersions in values which are commonly assumed "ground truth". This framework can be leveraged in order to quantify the effect of any type of uncertainty in noninvasive brain stimulation and bears relevance in all applications of TMS, both investigative and therapeutic.

Assessing the impact of aerosol-atmosphere interactions in convection-permitting regional climate simulations: the Rolf medicane in 2011

Science.gov (United States)

José Gómez-Navarro, Juan; María López-Romero, José; Palacios-Peña, Laura; Montávez, Juan Pedro; Jiménez-Guerrero, Pedro

2017-04-01

A critical challenge for assessing regional climate change projections relies on improving the estimate of atmospheric aerosol impact on clouds and reducing the uncertainty associated with the use of parameterizations. In this sense, the horizontal grid spacing implemented in state-of-the-art regional climate simulations is typically 10-25 kilometers, meaning that very important processes such as convective precipitation are smaller than a grid box, and therefore need to be parameterized. This causes large uncertainties, as closure assumptions and a number of parameters have to be established by model tuning. Convection is a physical process that may be strongly conditioned by atmospheric aerosols, although the solution of aerosol-cloud interactions in warm convective clouds remains nowadays a very important scientific challenge, rendering parametrization of these complex processes an important bottleneck that is responsible from a great part of the uncertainty in current climate change projections. Therefore, the explicit simulation of convective processes might improve the quality and reliability of the simulations of the aerosol-cloud interactions in a wide range of atmospheric phenomena. Particularly over the Mediterranean, the role of aerosol particles is very important, being this a crossroad that fuels the mixing of particles from different sources (sea-salt, biomass burning, anthropogenic, Saharan dust, etc). Still, the role of aerosols in extreme events in this area such as medicanes has been barely addressed. This work aims at assessing the role of aerosol-atmosphere interaction in medicanes with the help of the regional chemistry/climate on-line coupled model WRF-CHEM run at a convection-permitting resolution. The analysis is exemplary based on the "Rolf" medicane (6-8 November 2011). Using this case study as reference, four sets of simulations are run with two spatial resolutions: one at a convection-permitting configuration of 4 km, and other at the

VAST PLANES OF SATELLITES IN A HIGH-RESOLUTION SIMULATION OF THE LOCAL GROUP: COMPARISON TO ANDROMEDA

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gillet, N.; Ocvirk, P.; Aubert, D.; Knebe, A.; Yepes, G.; Libeskind, N.; Gottlöber, S.; Hoffman, Y.

2015-01-01

We search for vast planes of satellites (VPoS) in a high-resolution simulation of the Local Group performed by the CLUES project, which improves significantly the resolution of previous similar studies. We use a simple method for detecting planar configurations of satellites, and validate it on the known plane of M31. We implement a range of prescriptions for modeling the satellite populations, roughly reproducing the variety of recipes used in the literature, and investigate the occurrence and properties of planar structures in these populations. The structure of the simulated satellite systems is strongly non-random and contains planes of satellites, predominantly co-rotating, with, in some cases, sizes comparable to the plane observed in M31 by Ibata et al. However, the latter is slightly richer in satellites, slightly thinner, and has stronger co-rotation, which makes it stand out as overall more exceptional than the simulated planes, when compared to a random population. Although the simulated planes we find are generally dominated by one real structure forming its backbone, they are also partly fortuitous and are thus not kinematically coherent structures as a whole. Provided that the simulated and observed planes of satellites are indeed of the same nature, our results suggest that the VPoS of M31 is not a coherent disk and that one-third to one-half of its satellites must have large proper motions perpendicular to the plane

Constraining Transient Climate Sensitivity Using Coupled Climate Model Simulations of Volcanic Eruptions

KAUST Repository

Merlis, Timothy M.; Held, Isaac M.; Stenchikov, Georgiy L.; Zeng, Fanrong; Horowitz, Larry W.

2014-01-01

Coupled climate model simulations of volcanic eruptions and abrupt changes in CO2 concentration are compared in multiple realizations of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Climate Model, version 2.1 (GFDL CM2.1). The change in global-mean surface temperature (GMST) is analyzed to determine whether a fast component of the climate sensitivity of relevance to the transient climate response (TCR; defined with the 1%yr-1 CO2-increase scenario) can be estimated from shorter-time-scale climate changes. The fast component of the climate sensitivity estimated from the response of the climate model to volcanic forcing is similar to that of the simulations forced by abrupt CO2 changes but is 5%-15% smaller than the TCR. In addition, the partition between the top-of-atmosphere radiative restoring and ocean heat uptake is similar across radiative forcing agents. The possible asymmetry between warming and cooling climate perturbations, which may affect the utility of volcanic eruptions for estimating the TCR, is assessed by comparing simulations of abrupt CO2 doubling to abrupt CO2 halving. There is slightly less (~5%) GMST change in 0.5 × CO2 simulations than in 2 × CO2 simulations on the short (~10 yr) time scales relevant to the fast component of the volcanic signal. However, inferring the TCR from volcanic eruptions is more sensitive to uncertainties from internal climate variability and the estimation procedure. The response of the GMST to volcanic eruptions is similar in GFDL CM2.1 and GFDL Climate Model, version 3 (CM3), even though the latter has a higher TCR associated with a multidecadal time scale in its response. This is consistent with the expectation that the fast component of the climate sensitivity inferred from volcanic eruptions is a lower bound for the TCR.

Constraining Transient Climate Sensitivity Using Coupled Climate Model Simulations of Volcanic Eruptions

KAUST Repository

Merlis, Timothy M.

2014-10-01

Coupled climate model simulations of volcanic eruptions and abrupt changes in CO2 concentration are compared in multiple realizations of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Climate Model, version 2.1 (GFDL CM2.1). The change in global-mean surface temperature (GMST) is analyzed to determine whether a fast component of the climate sensitivity of relevance to the transient climate response (TCR; defined with the 1%yr-1 CO2-increase scenario) can be estimated from shorter-time-scale climate changes. The fast component of the climate sensitivity estimated from the response of the climate model to volcanic forcing is similar to that of the simulations forced by abrupt CO2 changes but is 5%-15% smaller than the TCR. In addition, the partition between the top-of-atmosphere radiative restoring and ocean heat uptake is similar across radiative forcing agents. The possible asymmetry between warming and cooling climate perturbations, which may affect the utility of volcanic eruptions for estimating the TCR, is assessed by comparing simulations of abrupt CO2 doubling to abrupt CO2 halving. There is slightly less (~5%) GMST change in 0.5 × CO2 simulations than in 2 × CO2 simulations on the short (~10 yr) time scales relevant to the fast component of the volcanic signal. However, inferring the TCR from volcanic eruptions is more sensitive to uncertainties from internal climate variability and the estimation procedure. The response of the GMST to volcanic eruptions is similar in GFDL CM2.1 and GFDL Climate Model, version 3 (CM3), even though the latter has a higher TCR associated with a multidecadal time scale in its response. This is consistent with the expectation that the fast component of the climate sensitivity inferred from volcanic eruptions is a lower bound for the TCR.

Learning to love the rain in Bergen (Norway) and other lessons from a Climate Services neophyte

Science.gov (United States)

Sobolowski, Stefan; Wakker, Joyce

2014-05-01

A question that is often asked of regional climate modelers generally, and Climate Service providers specifically, is: "What is the added-value of regional climate simulations and how can I use this information?" The answer is, unsurprisingly, not straightforward and depends greatly on what one needs to know. In particular it is important for scientist to communicate directly with the users of this information to determine what kind of information is important for them to do their jobs. This study is part of the ECLISE project (Enabling Climate Information Services for Europe) and involves a user at the municipality of Bergen's (Norway) water and drainage administration and a provider from Uni Research and the Bjerknes Center for Climate Research. The water and drain administration is responsible for communicating potential future changes in extreme precipitation, particularly short-term high-intensity rainfall, which is common in Bergen and making recommendations to the engineering department for changes in design criteria. Thus, information that enables better decision-making is crucial. This study then actually has two relevant components for climate services: 1) is a scientific exercise to evaluate the performance of high resolution regional climate simulations and their ability to reproduce high intensity short duration precipitation and 2) an exercise in communication between a provider community and user community with different concerns, mandates, methodological approaches and even vocabularies. A set of Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) simulations was run at high resolution (8km) over a large domain covering much of Scandinavia and Northern Europe. One simulation was driven by so-called "perfect" boundary conditions taken from reanalysis data (ERA-interim, 1989-2010) the second and third simulations used Norway's global climate model as boundary forcing (NorESM) and were run for a historical period (1950-2005) and a 30yr. end of the century time