Articles | Volume 11, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-453-2018
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-453-2018
Model description paper
 | 
01 Feb 2018
Model description paper |  | 01 Feb 2018

Online dynamical downscaling of temperature and precipitation within the iLOVECLIM model (version 1.1)

Aurélien Quiquet, Didier M. Roche, Christophe Dumas, and Didier Paillard

Abstract. This paper presents the inclusion of an online dynamical downscaling of temperature and precipitation within the model of intermediate complexity iLOVECLIM v1.1. We describe the following methodology to generate temperature and precipitation fields on a 40 km  ×  40 km Cartesian grid of the Northern Hemisphere from the T21 native atmospheric model grid. Our scheme is not grid specific and conserves energy and moisture in the same way as the original climate model. We show that we are able to generate a high-resolution field which presents a spatial variability in better agreement with the observations compared to the standard model. Although the large-scale model biases are not corrected, for selected model parameters, the downscaling can induce a better overall performance compared to the standard version on both the high-resolution grid and on the native grid. Foreseen applications of this new model feature include the improvement of ice sheet model coupling and high-resolution land surface models.

Download
Short summary
Earth system models of intermediate complexity generally have a simplified model physics and a coarse model resolution. In this work we present the inclusion of an online dynamical downscaling of temperature and precipitation in such a model. This downscaling explicitly takes into account sub-grid topography. With this new model functionality we are able to simulate temperature and precipitation on a 40 km grid for the whole Northern Hemisphere from the native model resolution.