Atmospheric circulation in regional climate models over Central Europe: links to surface air temperature and the influence of driving data

0380540 - ÚFA 2013 RIV US eng J - Journal Article
Plavcová, Eva - Kyselý, Jan
Atmospheric circulation in regional climate models over Central Europe: links to surface air temperature and the influence of driving data.
Climate Dynamics. Roč. 39, 7-8 (2012), s. 1681-1695. ISSN 0930-7575. E-ISSN 1432-0894
R&D Projects: GA ČR GAP209/10/2265
EU Projects: European Commission(XE) 505539 - ENSEMBLES
Institutional support: RVO:68378289
Keywords : Regional climate models * Global climate models * Atmospheric circulation * Surface air temperature * ENSEMBLES * Central Europe
Subject RIV: DG - Athmosphere Sciences, Meteorology
Impact factor: 4.231, year: 2012
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-011-1278-8#

The study examines simulation of atmospheric circulation, represented by circulation indices, and links between circulation and daily surface air temperatures in regional climate models (RCMs) over Central Europe. We explore control simulations of five high-resolution RCMs from the ENSEMBLES project driven by re-analysis (ERA-40) and the same global climate model (ECHAM5) plus of one RCM driven by different GCMs. Although most of the RCMs qualitatively reflect observed distributions of the airflow indices, each produces distributions significantly different from the observations. Some circulation biases obviously propagate from the driving data. Relatively strong relationships between circulation indices and surface air temperatures were found in the observed data for Central Europe. The links differ by season and are usually stronger for daily maxima than minima. RCMs qualitatively reproduce these relationships. Effects of the driving model biases were found on RCMs’ performance in reproducing also the links to surface temperature.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0211222