Boundary condition and oceanic impacts on the atmospheric water balance in limited area climate model ensembles

Abstract

Abstract Regional climate models (RCMs) are indispensable in climate research, albeit often characterized by biased terrestrial precipitation and water budgets. This study identifies excess oceanic evaporation, in conjunction with the RCMs’ boundary conditions, as drivers contributing to these biases in RCMs with forced sea surface temperatures in a CORDEX RCM ensemble over Europe. The RCMs are relaxed to the prescribed lateral boundary conditions originating from a global model, effectively matching the driving model's overall atmospheric moisture flux divergence. As a consequence, excess oceanic evaporation results in positive precipitation biases over land due to forced internal recycling of moisture to maintain the overall flux divergence prescribed by the boundary conditions. This systematic behaviour is shown through an analysis of long-term atmospheric water budgets and atmospheric moisture exchange between oceanic and continental areas in a multi-model ensemble.