Assessment of the Performance of CORDEX Regional Climate Models in Simulating East African Rainfall

This study evaluates the ability of 10 regional climate models (RCMs) from the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) in simulating the characteristics of rainfall patterns over eastern Africa. The seasonal climatology, annual rainfall cycles, and interannual variability of RCM...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of climate 2013-11, Vol.26 (21), p.8453-8475
Main Authors: Endris, Hussen Seid, Omondi, Philip, Jain, Suman, Lennard, Christopher, Hewitson, Bruce, Chang’a, Ladislaus, Awange, J. L., Dosio, Alessandro, Ketiem, Patrick, Nikulin, Grigory, Panitz, Hans-Jürgen, Büchner, Matthias, Stordal, Frode, Tazalika, Lukiya
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Annual rainfall
Annual variations
Assessments
Climate
Climate change
Climate models
Climatic zones
Climatology
Computer simulation
Datasets
Dipoles
Earth, ocean, space
El Nino
El Nino phenomena
El Nino-Southern Oscillation event
Exact sciences and technology
External geophysics
Future climates
Geophysics. Techniques, methods, instrumentation and models
Global climate
Global climate models
Interannual variability
Marine
Meteorology
Modeling
Modelling
Parameterization
Precipitation
Rain
Rainfall
Rainfall climatology
Rainfall cycles
Rainfall patterns
Rainfall simulators
RCM
Regional
Regional climate models
Regional climates
Regions
Seasons
Simulation
Southern Oscillation
Studies
Topography
Water in the atmosphere (humidity, clouds, evaporation, precipitation)
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Summary:This study evaluates the ability of 10 regional climate models (RCMs) from the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) in simulating the characteristics of rainfall patterns over eastern Africa. The seasonal climatology, annual rainfall cycles, and interannual variability of RCM output have been assessed over three homogeneous subregions against a number of observational datasets. The ability of the RCMs in simulating large-scale global climate forcing signals is further assessed by compositing the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) events. It is found that most RCMs reasonably simulate the main features of the rainfall climatology over the three subregions and also reproduce the majority of the documented regional responses to ENSO and IOD forcings. At the same time the analysis shows significant biases in individual models depending on subregion and season; however, the ensemble mean has better agreement with observation than individual models. In general, the analysis herein demonstrates that the multimodel ensemble mean simulates eastern Africa rainfall adequately and can therefore be used for the assessment of future climate projections for the region.
ISSN:0894-8755
1520-0442
DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00708.1