Investigation of the Sensitivity of Water Cycle Components Simulated by the Canadian Regional Climate Model to the Land Surface Parameterization, the Lateral Boundary Data, and the Internal Variability

Abstract This study investigates the sensitivity of components of the hydrological cycle simulated by the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM) to lateral boundary forcing, the complexity of the land surface scheme (LSS), and the internal variability arising from different models’ initial conditions. This evaluation is a contribution to the estimation of the uncertainty associated to regional climate model (RCM) simulations. The analysis was carried out over the period 1961–99 for three North American watersheds, and it looked at climatological seasonal means, mean (climatological) annual cycles, and interanual variability. The three watersheds—the Mississippi, the St. Lawrence, and the Mackenzie River basins—were selected to cover a large range of climate conditions. An evaluation of simulated water budget components with available observations was also included in the analysis. Results indicated that the response of climatological means and annual cycles of water budget components to land surface param...

[1]  Gordon B. Bonan,et al.  Land-atmosphere CO2 exchange simulated by a land surface process model coupled to an atmospheric general circulation model , 1995 .

[2]  D. Verseghy,et al.  CLASS-A Canadian Land Surface Scheme for GCMs , 1993 .

[3]  A. Pitman,et al.  Brief description of bare essentials of surface transfer and results from simulations with the HAPEX-MOBILHY data , 1996 .

[4]  Daniel Caya,et al.  Internal variability of RCM simulations over an annual cycle , 2004 .

[5]  Raquel V. Francisco,et al.  Regional Climate Information—Evaluation and Projections , 2001 .

[6]  S. Manabe.  CLIMATE AND THE OCEAN CIRCULATION1 , 1969 .

[7]  R. Laprise,et al.  Canadian RCM projected climate‐change signal and its sensitivity to model errors , 2006 .

[8]  Richard G. Jones,et al.  Simulation of climate change over Europe using a global variable resolution general circulation model , 1998 .

[9]  René Laprise,et al.  Regional climate modelling , 2008, J. Comput. Phys..

[10]  J. Deardorff.  Efficient prediction of ground surface temperature and moisture, with inclusion of a layer of vegetation , 1978 .

[11]  Pier Luigi Vidale,et al.  Evaluation of water and energy budgets in regional climate models applied over Europe , 2004 .

[12]  Jean Côté,et al.  Downscaling ability of one-way nested regional climate models: the Big-Brother Experiment , 2001 .

[13]  P. L. Roux.  Climate and climate change , 2008 .

[14]  T. D. Mitchell,et al.  An improved method of constructing a database of monthly climate observations and associated high‐resolution grids , 2005 .

[15]  D. Caya,et al.  Evaluation of the Hydrological Cycle over the Mississippi River Basin as Simulated by the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM) , 2007 .

[16]  A. Sterl,et al.  The ERA‐40 re‐analysis , 2005 .

[17]  Valerio Lucarini,et al.  Intercomparison of the northern hemisphere winter mid-latitude atmospheric variability of the IPCC models , 2007 .

[18]  Ann Henderson-Sellers,et al.  Forty years of numerical climate modelling , 2001 .

[19]  D. Legates,et al.  Mean seasonal and spatial variability in gauge‐corrected, global precipitation , 1990 .

[20]  W. D. Hogg,et al.  The water balance climatology of the Mackenzie basin with reference to the 1994/95 water year , 2002 .

[21]  R. Laprise,et al.  Surface water and energy budgets over the Mississippi and Columbia River basins as simulated by two generations of the Canadian regional climate model , 2007 .

[22]  D. Lettenmaier,et al.  A Long-Term Hydrologically Based Dataset of Land Surface Fluxes and States for the Conterminous United States* , 2002 .

[23]  Piers J. Sellers,et al.  Effects of implementing the simple biosphere model in a general circulation model , 1989 .

[24]  A. Dalcher,et al.  A Simple Biosphere Model (SIB) for Use within General Circulation Models , 1986 .

[25]  S. Seneviratne,et al.  Seasonal Variations in Terrestrial Water Storage for Major Midlatitude River Basins , 2006 .

[26]  R. Koster,et al.  Simulation of high-latitude hydrological processes in the Torne-Kalix basin: PILPS Phase 2(e) 3: Equivalent model representation and sensitivity experiments , 2003 .

[27]  M. Mackay,et al.  Assessing Water and Energy Budgets for the Mackenzie River Basin , 2008 .

[28]  Joanna Isobel House,et al.  Climate change 2001 : synthesis report , 2001 .

[29]  J. Janowiak,et al.  The Version 2 Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) Monthly Precipitation Analysis (1979-Present) , 2003 .

[30]  René Laprise,et al.  A Semi-Implicit Semi-Lagrangian Regional Climate Model: The Canadian RCM , 1999 .

[31]  Michael S. Fox-Rabinovitz,et al.  A Variable-Resolution Stretched-Grid General Circulation Model: Regional Climate Simulation , 2001 .

[32]  David Robinson,et al.  Gridded North American monthly snow depth and snow water equivalent for GCM evaluation , 2003 .

[33]  R. Laprise,et al.  Current and perturbed climate as simulated by the second-generation Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM-II) over northwestern North America , 2003 .

[34]  Douglas A. Miller,et al.  GCIP water and energy budget synthesis (WEBS) , 2002 .

[35]  Jesper Heile Christensen,et al.  Daily precipitation statistics in regional climate models: Evaluation and intercomparison for the European Alps , 2003 .

[36]  M. Suárez,et al.  Regional Climate Simulation with a Variable Resolution Stretched Grid GCM: The Regional Down-Scaling Effects , 1999 .

[37]  R. Reynolds,et al.  The NCEP/NCAR 40-Year Reanalysis Project , 1996, Renewable Energy.

[38]  Valerio Lucarini,et al.  Does the Danube exist? Versions of reality given by various regional climate models and climatological data sets , 2006, physics/0612222.

[39]  David R. Maidment,et al.  Five‐minute, 1/2°, and 1° data sets of continental watersheds and river networks for use in regional and global hydrologic and climate system modeling studies , 1999 .

[40]  C. E. Desborough,et al.  Surface energy balance complexity in GCM land surface models , 1999 .

[41]  D. Verseghy,et al.  Class—A Canadian land surface scheme for GCMS. I. Soil model , 2007 .

[42]  Lisa J. Graumlich,et al.  Interactive Canopies for a Climate Model , 1998 .

[43]  Dominique Paquin,et al.  Climate and Climate Change over North America as Simulated by the Canadian RCM , 2006 .

[44]  Dominique Paquin,et al.  Evaluation of uncertainties in the CRCM-simulated North American climate , 2008 .

[45]  H. Davies,et al.  A lateral boundary formulation for multi-level prediction models. [numerical weather forecasting , 1976 .

[46]  René Laprise,et al.  The impact of lateral boundary data errors on the simulated climate of a nested regional climate model , 2007 .

[47]  D. Randall,et al.  A Revised Land Surface Parameterization (SiB2) for Atmospheric GCMS. Part I: Model Formulation , 1996 .

[48]  R. Dickinson,et al.  The Project for Intercomparison of Land Surface Parameterization Schemes (PILPS): Phases 2 and 3 , 1993 .

[49]  René Laprise,et al.  Investigation of regional climate models’ internal variability with a ten-member ensemble of 10-year simulations over a large domain , 2008 .

[50]  R. Dickinson.  Land Surface Processes and Climate—Surface Albedos and Energy Balance , 1983 .