Evaluation of the precipitation for South-western Germany from high resolution simulations with regional climate models

Abstract

Precipitation data from long-term high-resolution simulations with two regional climate models (CLM and REMO) are evaluated using a climatology based on observations for south-western Germany. Both models are driven by a present day climate forcing scenario from the global climate model ECHAM5. The climatological evaluation shows a strong seasonal dependence of the model deficiencies. In spring and summer there are relatively small differences between simulation results and observations. But during winter both the regional models and ECHAM5 strongly overestimate the precipitation. The frequency distributions of the model results agree well with observed data. An overestimation of the precipitation at the upwind sides of mountainous areas occurs in the regional simulations. We found that the coupling of the regional models to the driving model is stronger in winter than in summer. Therefore, in winter the large scale model have a larger impact on the performance of the regional simulations. During summer the benefit of regional climate simulations is higher.