Statistical Downscaling of Pattern Projection Using Multi-Model Output Variables as Predictors

A pattern projection downscaling method is employed to predict monthly station precipitation. The predictand is the monthly precipitation at 1 station in China, 60 stations in Korea, and 8 stations in Thailand. The predictors are multiple variables from the output of operational dynamical models. The hindcast datasets span a period of 21 yr from 1983 to 2003. A downscaled prediction is made for each model separately within a leave-one-out cross-validation framework. The pattern projection method uses a moving window, which scans globally, in order to seek the most optimal predictor for each station. The final forecast is the average of the model downscaled precipitation forecasts using the best predictors and is referred to as DMME. It is found that DMME significantly improves the prediction skill by correcting the erroneous signs of the rainfall anomalies in coarse resolution predictions of general circulation models. The correlation coefficient between the prediction of DMME and the observation in Beijing of China reaches 0.71; the skill is improved to 0.75 for Korea and 0.61 for Thailand. The improvement of the prediction skills for the first two cases is attributed to three steps: coupled pattern selection, optimal predictor selection, and multi-model downscaled precipitation ensemble. For Thailand, we use the single-predictor prediction, which results in a lower prediction skill than the other two cases. This study indicates that the large-scale circulation variables, which are predicted by the current operational dynamical models, if selected well, can be used to make skillful predictions of local precipitation by means of appropriate statistical downscaling.