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Performance of a multi-RCM ensemble for South Eastern South America

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Abstract

The ability of four regional climate models to reproduce the present-day South American climate is examined with emphasis on La Plata Basin. Models were integrated for the period 1991–2000 with initial and lateral boundary conditions from ERA-40 Reanalysis. The ensemble sea level pressure, maximum and minimum temperatures and precipitation are evaluated in terms of seasonal means and extreme indices based on a percentile approach. Dispersion among the individual models and uncertainties when comparing the ensemble mean with different climatologies are also discussed. The ensemble mean is warmer than the observations in South Eastern South America (SESA), especially for minimum winter temperatures with errors increasing in magnitude towards the tails of the distributions. The ensemble mean reproduces the broad spatial pattern of precipitation, but overestimates the convective precipitation in the tropics and the orographic precipitation along the Andes and over the Brazilian Highlands, and underestimates the precipitation near the monsoon core region. The models overestimate the number of wet days and underestimate the daily intensity of rainfall for both seasons suggesting a premature triggering of convection. The skill of models to simulate the intensity of convective precipitation in summer in SESA and the variability associated with heavy precipitation events (the upper quartile daily precipitation) is far from satisfactory. Owing to the sparseness of the observing network, ensemble and observations uncertainties in seasonal means are comparable for some regions and seasons.

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Acknowledgments

The research leading to these results received funding from the European Community’s Sixth Framework Programme (CLARIS, Grant Agreement No 1454) and from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (CLARIS-LPB, Grant Agreement No 212492). The first author was partially supported by PIP 112-200801-01788 (CONICET, Argentina) and PICT 2008-00237 (FONCYT, Argentina). Thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, which helped us to improve the manuscript.

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  1. Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA), CONICET-UBA, Ciudad Universitaria, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Int. Guiraldes 2160, Pabellón 2, Piso 2, C1428EGA, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    A. F. Carril, C. G. Menéndez, A. Sörensson, P. Salio & P. Zaninelli

  2. Departamento de Ciencias de la Atmósfera y los Océanos (DCAO), FCEN, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    A. F. Carril, C. G. Menéndez, F. Robledo, B. Tencer, O. Penalba, M. Rusticucci & P. Salio

  3. UMI IFAECI/CNRS, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    A. F. Carril, C. G. Menéndez, A. Sörensson, O. Penalba, M. Rusticucci, P. Salio & P. Zaninelli

  4. LOCEAN, UMR CNRS/IRD/UPMC, Paris, France

    J.-P. Boulanger

  5. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), Hamburg, Germany

    A. R. C. Remedio, D. Jacob & S. Pfeifer

  6. Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD), Institut-Pierre-Simon-Laplace et Ecole Doctorale, Sciences de l’Environnement en Ile de France, Paris, France

    H. Le Treut & L. Z. X. Li

  7. Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), Norrkö**, Sweden

    P. Samuelsson

  8. Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), Toledo, Spain

    M. de Castro & E. Sanchez

Authors
  1. A. F. Carril
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  2. C. G. Menéndez
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  3. A. R. C. Remedio
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  4. F. Robledo
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  5. A. Sörensson
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  6. B. Tencer
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  7. J.-P. Boulanger
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  8. M. de Castro
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  9. D. Jacob
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  10. H. Le Treut
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  11. L. Z. X. Li
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  12. O. Penalba
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  13. S. Pfeifer
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  14. M. Rusticucci
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  15. P. Salio
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  16. P. Samuelsson
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  17. E. Sanchez
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  18. P. Zaninelli
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to A. F. Carril.

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Carril, A.F., Menéndez, C.G., Remedio, A.R.C. et al. Performance of a multi-RCM ensemble for South Eastern South America. Clim Dyn 39, 2747–2768 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1573-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1573-z

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