Added value of EURO-CORDEX high-resolution downscaling over the Iberian Peninsula revisited – Part 1: Precipitation

Abstract

Over the years, higher-resolution regional climate model simulations have emerged owing to the large increase in computational resources. The 12 km resolution from the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment for the European domain (EURO-CORDEX) is a reference, which includes a larger multi-model ensemble at a continental scale while spanning at least a 130-year period. These simulations are computationally demanding but do not always reveal added value. In this study, a recently developed regular gridded dataset and a new metric for added value quantification, the distribution added value (DAV), are used to assess the precipitation of all available EURO-CORDEX hindcast (1989–2008) and historical (1971–2005) simulations. This approach enables a direct comparison between the higher-resolution regional model runs against their forcing global model or ERA-Interim reanalysis with respect to their probability density functions. This assessment is performed for the Iberian Peninsula. Overall, important gains are found for most cases, particularly in precipitation extremes. Most hindcast models reveal gains above 15 %, namely for wintertime, while for precipitation extremes values above 20 % are reached for the summer and autumn. As for the historical models, although most pairs display gains, regional models forced by two general circulation models (GCMs) reveal losses, sometimes around −5 % or lower, for the entire year. However, the spatialization of the DAV is clear in terms of added value for precipitation, particularly for precipitation extremes with gains well above 100 %.