Modeling extreme precipitation over East China with a global variable-resolution modeling framework (MPASv5.2): impacts of resolution and physics

Zhao, Chun; Xu, Mingyue; Wang, Yu; Zhang, Meixin; Guo, Jianping; Hu, Zhiyuan; Leung, L. Ruby; Duda, Michael; Skamarock, William

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-2707-2019

Articles | Volume 12, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-2707-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-2707-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 7

Model evaluation paper

|

08 Jul 2019

Model evaluation paper |

| 08 Jul 2019

Modeling extreme precipitation over East China with a global variable-resolution modeling framework (MPASv5.2): impacts of resolution and physics

Chun Zhao, Mingyue Xu, Yu Wang, Meixin Zhang, Jianping Guo, Zhiyuan Hu, L. Ruby Leung, Michael Duda, and William Skamarock

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Final revised paper (published on 08 Jul 2019)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 12 Feb 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Anonymous review of Zhao et al. (2019)', Anonymous Referee #1, 09 Mar 2019
- SC1: 'Quick response to the anonymous referee #1', Chun Zhao, 11 Mar 2019
  - RC2: 'Quick reply to the lead author's quick feedback', Anonymous Referee #1, 11 Mar 2019
RC3: 'Anonymous review of Zhao et al. (2019)', Anonymous Referee #2, 30 Mar 2019
AC1: 'Responses to the two anonymous referees comments', Chun Zhao, 30 Apr 2019

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Chun Zhao on behalf of the Authors (30 Apr 2019)

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (06 May 2019) by Jason Williams

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (07 May 2019)

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (23 May 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I am a new reviewer. The study is interesting and of potential great significance to relevant research on weather forecast and climate modeling. After reading through the manuscript and the authors’ response to the comments from two Anonymous Referees, I find the authors do a good job in addressing most of the reviewers’ comments. However, the manuscript might still need some revisions before accepted for publication in ACP. I fall between minor revision and major revision and suggest a major revision such that there will be enough time for the authors to revise.

Major comments:

(1) I think some of Anonymous Referee #2’s comments suggest a fair evaluation. For example, “Major comments 3b: Figure 4 and 8 … whereas at V4km the precipitation magnitudes seem too positively biased over a greater area and longer time…”. The authors did reply to this on timing and paid less attention to the magnitude. I understand it is very important to capture the locations of precipitation, but overestimation of precipitation is also important to note as it may cause “false alarm” in weather forecast. Please adjust some words to mention the overestimation in the model. In addition, mean bias and root mean square error are good metrics to evaluate the magnitude. The authors can provide the metrics as in Table 2.

A fair evaluation also lies in other aspects:

(a) the spatial correlation is calculated for the selected domain and indicates the mean metric for the whole domain. However, some analysis is shifted to the rain belt. To find the locations of rain belts which the authors point out in the text, please denote the outlines of rain belt (e.g., > a selected value) or heavy rain belt (e.g., > a selected value) using contour lines.

(b) From Figure 4(8) to Figure 3(7), a temporal mean is derived. Zonal mean results (magnitude) may depend on the longitude range used for the calculation. The author should explicitly mention the domain extent (I suppose the domain extends from 114 E to 122.5 E) and justify why this range is used. In addition, if zonal mean is derived, the temporal variation of precipitation can be derived and the temporal shift of precipitation in the models can be clearly shown. I suggest temporal variations can be provided (the authors can decide where to put it: in main text or supplement).

(2) Section 2.1.2: Is MPAS ran in weather-forecast mode? In particular, what are the surface boundary conditions (such as SST and surface temperature/soil moisture) used for the model run? Please clarify whether it is fair to compare MPAS and GFS.

(3) Section 2.2: I am wondering how many stations are used and what is minimum/mean/maximum distance between a station and surrounding stations. It is possible that the observations miss some extreme precipitations, which may contribute partly to the model biases relative to the current observation (e.g., overestimation mentioned earlier). In addtion, I am wondering whether data control is done on hourly data? In my opinion, evaluation of high-resolution model needs high-resolution observations. Please provide some information on the station observations.

Other comments:

(1) The authors should consistently set the orders of experiments in Figures 11-13 as in previous Figures 5-10: U60km.WSM6, V30km.WSM6, V16km.WSM6, V4km.WSM6, V4km.Thompson.

(2) Section 2.1.1, Lines 218-220: Since there are two options of PBL scheme, which one is used in the study?

(3) Section 2.2, Lines 307-308: I cannot open https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/model-data/model-datasets/global-forcast-system-gfs.

(4) Section 3.1, Lines 337-338: “with only negligible impacts from different convective parameterizations” is not clear.

(5) Section 3.2.3, Figure 10: It will be useful if the authors can provide a map with geographical locations of provinces, mountains, plains mentioned in the main text. The map can be put in Figure 10.

(6) Section 3.2.3, Lines 574-575: Change "in that simulations" to "in those simulations"?

(7) Conclusions, Lines 609-663: The sentences can be shorten be one-third or one-half.

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (27 May 2019) by Jason Williams

AR by Chun Zhao on behalf of the Authors (31 May 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (13 Jun 2019) by Jason Williams

AR by Chun Zhao on behalf of the Authors (14 Jun 2019) Manuscript

Short summary

Simulations at global uniform and variable resolutions share similar characteristics of precipitation and wind in the refined region. The experiments reveal the significant impacts of resolution on simulating the distribution and intensity of precipitation and updrafts. This study provides evidence supporting the use of convection-permitting global variable-resolution simulations to study extreme precipitation.