Convective and stratiform precipitation characteristics in an ensemble of regional climate model simulations

We apply a recently proposed algorithm for disaggregating observed precipitation data into predominantly convective and stratiform, and evaluate biases in characteristics of parameterized convective (subgrid) and stratiform (large-scale) precipitation in an ensemble of 11 RCM simulations for recent climate in Central Europe. All RCMs have a resolution of 25 km and are driven by the ERA-40 reanalysis. We focus on mean annual cycle, proportion of convective precipitation, dependence on altitude, and extremes. The results show that characteristics of total precipitation are often better simulated than are those of convective and stratiform precipitation evaluated separately. While annual cycles of convective and stratiform precipitation are reproduced reasonably well in most RCMs, some of them consistently and substantially overestimate or underestimate the proportion of convective precipitation throughout the year. Intensity of convective precipitation is underestimated in all RCMs. Dependence on altitude is also simulated better for stratiform and total precipitation than for convective precipitation, for which several RCMs produce unrealistic slopes. Extremes are underestimated for convective precipitation while they tend to be slightly overestimated for stratiform precipitation, thus resulting in a relatively good reproduction of extremes in total precipitation amounts. The results suggest that the examined ensemble of RCMs suffers from substantial deficiencies in reproducing precipitation processes and support previous findings that climate models’ errors in precipitation characteristics are mainly related to deficiencies in the representation of convection.     

Searching for Added Value in Simulating Climate Extremes with a High-Resolution Regional Climate Model over Western Canada

We evaluate the capacity of a regional climate model to represent observed extreme temperature and precipitation events and also examine the impact of increased resolution, in an effort to identify added value in this respect. Two climate simulations of western Canada (WCan) were conducted with the Canadian Regional Climate Model (version 4) at 15 (CRCM15) and 45?km (CRCM45) horizontal resolution driven at the lateral boundaries by data from the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) 40-year Reanalysis (ERA-40) for the period 1973–1995. The simulations were evaluated using the spline-interpolated dataset ANUSPLIN, a daily observational gridded surface temperature and precipitation product with a nominal resolution of approximately 10?km. We examine a range of climate extremes, comprising the 10th and 90th percentiles of daily maximum (TX) and minimum (TN) temperatures, the 90th percentile of daily precipitation (PR90), and the 27 core Climate Daily Extremes (CLIMDEX) indices.

Both simulations exhibit cold biases compared with observations over WCan, with the bias exacerbated at higher resolution, suggesting little added value for temperature overall. There are instances, however, of regional improvement in the spatial pattern of temperature extremes at the higher resolution of CRCM15 (e.g., the CLIMDEX index for the annual number of days when TX?>?25°C). The high-resolution simulations also reveal similarly localized features in precipitation (e.g., rain shadows) that are not resolved at the 45?km resolution. With regard to precipitation extremes, although both simulations generally display wet biases, CRCM15 features a reduced bias in PR90 in all seasons except winter. This improvement occurs despite the fact that spatial and interannual variability of PR90 in CRCM15 is significantly overestimated relative to both CRCM45 and ANUSPLIN. We posit that these characteristics are the result of demonstrable differences between corresponding topographical datasets used in the gridded observations and CRCM, the resulting errors propagated to physical variables tied to elevation and the beneficial effect of subsequent spatial averaging. Because topographical input is often discordant between simulations and gridded observations, it is argued that a limited form of spatial averaging may contribute added value beyond that which has already been noted in previous studies with respect to small-scale climate variability.     

Using a regional numerical weather prediction model for GNSS positioning over Brazil

The global navigation satellite system (GNSS) can provide centimeter positioning accuracy at low costs. However, in order to obtain the desired high accuracy, it is necessary to use high-quality atmospheric models. We focus on the troposphere, which is an important topic of research in Brazil where the tropospheric characteristics are unique, both spatially and temporally. There are dry regions, which lie mainly in the central part of the country. However, the most interesting area for the investigation of tropospheric models is the wet region which is located in the Amazon forest. This region substantially affects the variability of humidity over other regions of Brazil. It provides a large quantity of water vapor through the humidity convergence zone, especially for the southeast region. The interconnection and large fluxes of water vapor can generate serious deficiencies in tropospheric modeling. The CPTEC/INPE (Center for Weather Forecasting and Climate Studies/Brazilian Institute for Space Research) has been providing since July 2012 a numerical weather prediction (NWP) model for South America, known as Eta. It has yield excellent results in weather prediction but has not been used in GNSS positioning. This NWP model was evaluated in precise point positioning (PPP) and network-based positioning. Concerning PPP, the best positioning results were obtained for the station SAGA, located in Amazon region. Using the NWP model, the 3D RMS are less than 10 cm for all 24 h of data, whereas the values reach approximately 60 cm for the Hopfield model. For network-based positioning, the best results were obtained mainly when the tropospheric characteristics are critical, in which case an improvement of up to 7.2 % was obtained in 3D RMS using NWP models.     

User Contribution Patterns and Completeness Evaluation of Mapillary,a Crowdsourced Street Level Photo Service

Mapillary is a Web 2.0 application which allows users to contribute crowdsourced street level photographs from all over the world. In the first part of the analysis this article reviews Mapillary data growth for continents and countries as well as the contribution behavior of individual mappers, such as the number of days of active mapping. In the second part of the analysis the study assesses Mapillary data completeness relative to a reference road network dataset at the country level. In addition, a more detailed completeness analysis is conducted for selected urban and rural areas in the US and part of northern Europe for which the completeness of Mapillary data will also be compared with that of Google Street View. Results show that Street View provides generally a better coverage on almost all road categories with some exceptions for pedestrian and cycle paths in selected cities. However, Mapillary data can be conveniently collected from any mobile device that is equipped with a photo camera. This gives Mapillary the potential to reach better coverage along off‐road segments than Google Street View.