EVALUATION OF RETROSPECTIVE REGIONAL CLIMATE MODEL RUNS WITH VERA WITHIN THE PROJECT RECLIP:MORE

The 3-year project “Research for Climate Protection: Model Run Evaluation” (reclip:more) is a cooperation of five academic institutions in Austria The major aim of the project is to evaluate the capability of dynamical and statistical downscaling methods in the Alpine region to create climate scenarios at mesoscale and microscale resolutions. Two regional circulation models ALADIN and the PSU/NCAR mesoscale model MM5 will be driven by ERA-40 reanalysis data and ECHAM5 global circulation model (GCM) results, representing current (1991-2000) and future (2041-2050) climate to accomplish dynamical downscaling from the coarse GCM resolution (spectral truncation T106, i.e. ~120 km horizontal resolution) to 10-15 km. The evaluation of the 2D surface fields of the retrospective runs are performed with the Vienna Enhanced Resolution Analyses (VERA) scheme. VERA produces model independent 2D analyses of meteorological parameters on a regular grid. The comparison will cover single extreme events, an annual cycle and a ten year period. The results will serve as a criteria to find the best model set up for the prospective runs.