Impact of Model Resolution on the Simulation of Precipitation Extremes over China

Abstract

Climate models tend to overestimate light precipitation and underestimate heavy precipitation due to low model resolution. This work investigated the impact of model resolution on simulating the precipitation extremes over China during 1995–2014, based on five models from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 (CMIP6), each having low- and high-resolution versions. Six extreme indices were employed: simple daily intensity index (SDII), wet days (WD), total precipitation (PRCPTOT), extreme precipitation amount (R95p), heavy precipitation days (R20mm), and consecutive dry days (CDD). Models with high resolution demonstrated better performance in reproducing the pattern of climatological precipitation extremes over China, especially in the western Sichuan Basin along the eastern side of the Tibetan Plateau (D1), South China (D2), and the Yangtze-Yellow River basins (D3). Decreased biases of precipitation exist in all high-resolution models over D1, with the largest decease in root mean square error (RMSE) being 48.4% in CNRM-CM6. The improvement could be attributed to fewer weak precipitation events (0 mm/day–10 mm/day) in high-resolution models in comparison with their counterparts with low resolutions. In addition, high-resolution models also show smaller biases over D2, which is associated with better capturing of the distribution of daily precipitation frequency and improvement of the simulation of the vertical distribution of moisture content.