European Precipitation Extremes Using High Resolution Model

Abstract:

European wintertime rainfall is known to be skillfully estimated in reanalysis data and models' simulations since it is highly correlated with large scale, low frequency modes of variability, namely the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). As the NAO is mainly a wintertime mode of variability, the skill of estimating precipitation becomes significantly lower in the other seasons, most importantly in the summer, in which precipitation is mainly a result of mesoscale convection. In this study, we use the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model, to show the added value of using a high resolution convection-permitting model in estimating precipitation extremes. The results show that the high resolution WRF simulations succeeds to estimate precipitation extremes compared to observational data (EOBS), especially in summer and transition seasons, while ERA-Interim reanalysis has a good performance only in winter.