Articles | Volume 14, issue 8
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-4977-2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-4977-2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Latent Linear Adjustment Autoencoder v1.0: a novel method for estimating and emulating dynamic precipitation at high resolution
Christina Heinze-Deml
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Seminar for Statistics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Sebastian Sippel
Seminar for Statistics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Angeline G. Pendergrass
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Flavio Lehner
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Nicolai Meinshausen
Seminar for Statistics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Related authors
No articles found.
Peter Pfleiderer, Anna Merrifield, István Dunkl, Homer Durand, Enora Cariou, Julien Cattiaux, and Sebastian Sippel
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2397, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2397, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Due to changes in atmospheric circulation some regions are warming quicker than others. Statistical methods are used to estimate how much of the local summer temperature trends are due to circulation changes. We evaluate these methods by comparing their estimates to special simulations representing only temperature changes related to circulation changes. By applying the methods to observations of 1979–2023 we find that half of the warming over parts of Europe is related to circulation changes.
Na Li, Sebastian Sippel, Nora Linscheid, Miguel D. Mahecha, Markus Reichstein, and Ana Bastos
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1924, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1924, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
The global land carbon sink has increased since the pre-industrial period, mainly caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 emissions and climate change. However, the large year-to-year variations can mask or amplify this trend. Here, we detect the time for the anthropogenic signal to emerge over natural variations in land carbon sink. We removed the circulation-induced variations in the global land carbon sink and effectively reduced the detection time of anthropogenic signal.
Mari R. Tye, Ming Ge, Jadwiga H. Richter, Ethan D. Gutmann, Allyson Rugg, Cindy L. Bruyère, Sue Ellen Haupt, Flavio Lehner, Rachel McCrary, Andrew J. Newman, and Andy Wood
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 1117–1133, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1117-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1117-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
There is a perceived mismatch between the spatial scales on which global climate models can produce data and those needed for water management decisions. However, poor communication of specific metrics relevant to local decisions is also a problem. We assessed the credibility of a set of water management decision metrics in the Community Earth System Model v2 (CESM2). CESM2 shows potentially greater use of its output in long-range water management decisions.
Nicola Maher, Adam S. Phillips, Clara Deser, Robert C. Jnglin Wills, Flavio Lehner, John Fasullo, Julie M. Caron, Lukas Brunner, and Urs Beyerle
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3684, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3684, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
We present a new multi-model large ensemble archive (MMLEAv2) and introduce the newly updated Climate Variability Diagnostics Package version 6 (CVDPv6), which is designed specifically for use with large ensembles. For highly variable quantities, we demonstrate that a model might evaluate poorly or favourably compared to the single realisation of the world that the observations represent, highlighting the need for large ensembles for model evaluation.
Angeline G. Pendergrass, Michael P. Byrne, Oliver Watt-Meyer, Penelope Maher, and Mark J. Webb
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 6365–6378, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-6365-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-6365-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
The width of the tropical rain belt affects many aspects of our climate, yet we do not understand what controls it. To better understand it, we present a method to change it in numerical model experiments. We show that the method works well in four different models. The behavior of the width is unexpectedly simple in some ways, such as how strong the winds are as it changes, but in other ways, it is more complicated, especially how temperature increases with carbon dioxide.
Sebastian Sippel, Clair Barnes, Camille Cadiou, Erich Fischer, Sarah Kew, Marlene Kretschmer, Sjoukje Philip, Theodore G. Shepherd, Jitendra Singh, Robert Vautard, and Pascal Yiou
Weather Clim. Dynam., 5, 943–957, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-5-943-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-5-943-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Winter temperatures in central Europe have increased. But cold winters can still cause problems for energy systems, infrastructure, or human health. Here we tested whether a record-cold winter, such as the one observed in 1963 over central Europe, could still occur despite climate change. The answer is yes: it is possible, but it is very unlikely. Our results rely on climate model simulations and statistical rare event analysis. In conclusion, society must be prepared for such cold winters.
Jiwoo Lee, Peter J. Gleckler, Min-Seop Ahn, Ana Ordonez, Paul A. Ullrich, Kenneth R. Sperber, Karl E. Taylor, Yann Y. Planton, Eric Guilyardi, Paul Durack, Celine Bonfils, Mark D. Zelinka, Li-Wei Chao, Bo Dong, Charles Doutriaux, Chengzhu Zhang, Tom Vo, Jason Boutte, Michael F. Wehner, Angeline G. Pendergrass, Daehyun Kim, Zeyu Xue, Andrew T. Wittenberg, and John Krasting
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 3919–3948, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-3919-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-3919-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
We introduce an open-source software, the PCMDI Metrics Package (PMP), developed for a comprehensive comparison of Earth system models (ESMs) with real-world observations. Using diverse metrics evaluating climatology, variability, and extremes simulated in thousands of simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), PMP aids in benchmarking model improvements across generations. PMP also enables efficient tracking of performance evolutions during ESM developments.
Ankur Dixit, Sandeep Sahany, Flavio Lehner, and Saroj Kanta Mishra
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-587, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-587, 2024
Preprint archived
Short summary
Short summary
This study calibrates WRF-Hydro in a Himalayan basin, finding precipitation choice significantly influences results over parameter sets. Study highlights the importance of tailored calibration strategies and parameter sensitivity analyses for accurate streamflow predictions in Himalayan basins, crucial for effective water resource management.
Dominik L. Schumacher, Mariam Zachariah, Friederike Otto, Clair Barnes, Sjoukje Philip, Sarah Kew, Maja Vahlberg, Roop Singh, Dorothy Heinrich, Julie Arrighi, Maarten van Aalst, Mathias Hauser, Martin Hirschi, Verena Bessenbacher, Lukas Gudmundsson, Hiroko K. Beaudoing, Matthew Rodell, Sihan Li, Wenchang Yang, Gabriel A. Vecchi, Luke J. Harrington, Flavio Lehner, Gianpaolo Balsamo, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Earth Syst. Dynam., 15, 131–154, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-131-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-131-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
The 2022 summer was accompanied by widespread soil moisture deficits, including an unprecedented drought in Europe. Combining several observation-based estimates and models, we find that such an event has become at least 5 and 20 times more likely due to human-induced climate change in western Europe and the northern extratropics, respectively. Strong regional warming fuels soil desiccation; hence, projections indicate even more potent future droughts as we progress towards a 2 °C warmer world.
Min-Seop Ahn, Paul A. Ullrich, Peter J. Gleckler, Jiwoo Lee, Ana C. Ordonez, and Angeline G. Pendergrass
Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 3927–3951, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-3927-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-3927-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
We introduce a framework for regional-scale evaluation of simulated precipitation distributions with 62 climate reference regions and 10 metrics and apply it to evaluate CMIP5 and CMIP6 models against multiple satellite-based precipitation products. The common model biases identified in this study are mainly associated with the overestimated light precipitation and underestimated heavy precipitation. These biases persist from earlier-generation models and have been slightly improved in CMIP6.
Iris Elisabeth de Vries, Sebastian Sippel, Angeline Greene Pendergrass, and Reto Knutti
Earth Syst. Dynam., 14, 81–100, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-81-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-81-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
Precipitation change is an important consequence of climate change, but it is hard to detect and quantify. Our intuitive method yields robust and interpretable detection of forced precipitation change in three observational datasets for global mean and extreme precipitation, but the different observational datasets show different magnitudes of forced change. Assessment and reduction of uncertainties surrounding forced precipitation change are important for future projections and adaptation.
Sjoukje Y. Philip, Sarah F. Kew, Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, Faron S. Anslow, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Robert Vautard, Dim Coumou, Kristie L. Ebi, Julie Arrighi, Roop Singh, Maarten van Aalst, Carolina Pereira Marghidan, Michael Wehner, Wenchang Yang, Sihan Li, Dominik L. Schumacher, Mathias Hauser, Rémy Bonnet, Linh N. Luu, Flavio Lehner, Nathan Gillett, Jordis S. Tradowsky, Gabriel A. Vecchi, Chris Rodell, Roland B. Stull, Rosie Howard, and Friederike E. L. Otto
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 1689–1713, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1689-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1689-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
In June 2021, the Pacific Northwest of the US and Canada saw record temperatures far exceeding those previously observed. This attribution study found such a severe heat wave would have been virtually impossible without human-induced climate change. Assuming no nonlinear interactions, such events have become at least 150 times more common, are about 2 °C hotter and will become even more common as warming continues. Therefore, adaptation and mitigation are urgently needed to prepare society.
Na Li, Sebastian Sippel, Alexander J. Winkler, Miguel D. Mahecha, Markus Reichstein, and Ana Bastos
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 1505–1533, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1505-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1505-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
Quantifying the imprint of large-scale atmospheric circulation dynamics and associated carbon cycle responses is key to improving our understanding of carbon cycle dynamics. Using a statistical model that relies on spatiotemporal sea level pressure as a proxy for large-scale atmospheric circulation, we quantify the fraction of interannual variability in atmospheric CO2 growth rate and the land CO2 sink that are driven by atmospheric circulation variability.
Benjamin M. Sanderson, Angeline G. Pendergrass, Charles D. Koven, Florent Brient, Ben B. B. Booth, Rosie A. Fisher, and Reto Knutti
Earth Syst. Dynam., 12, 899–918, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-899-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-899-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
Emergent constraints promise a pathway to the reduction in climate projection uncertainties by exploiting ensemble relationships between observable quantities and unknown climate response parameters. This study considers the robustness of these relationships in light of biases and common simplifications that may be present in the original ensemble of climate simulations. We propose a classification scheme for constraints and a number of practical case studies.
Folmer Krikken, Flavio Lehner, Karsten Haustein, Igor Drobyshev, and Geert Jan van Oldenborgh
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 2169–2179, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-2169-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-2169-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
In this study, we analyse the role of climate change in the forest fires that raged through large parts of Sweden in the summer of 2018 from a meteorological perspective. This is done by studying observationally constrained data and multiple climate models. We find a small reduced probability of such events, based on reanalyses, but a small increased probability due to global warming up to now and a more robust increase in the risk for such events in the future, based on climate models.
Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, Folmer Krikken, Sophie Lewis, Nicholas J. Leach, Flavio Lehner, Kate R. Saunders, Michiel van Weele, Karsten Haustein, Sihan Li, David Wallom, Sarah Sparrow, Julie Arrighi, Roop K. Singh, Maarten K. van Aalst, Sjoukje Y. Philip, Robert Vautard, and Friederike E. L. Otto
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 941–960, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-941-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-941-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
Southeastern Australia suffered from disastrous bushfires during the 2019/20 fire season, raising the question whether these have become more likely due to climate change. We found no attributable trend in extreme annual or monthly low precipitation but a clear shift towards more extreme heat. However, this shift is underestimated by the models. Analysing fire weather directly, we found that the chance has increased by at least 30 %, but due to the underestimation it could well be higher.
Milan Flach, Alexander Brenning, Fabian Gans, Markus Reichstein, Sebastian Sippel, and Miguel D. Mahecha
Biogeosciences, 18, 39–53, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-39-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-39-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
Drought and heat events affect the uptake and sequestration of carbon in terrestrial ecosystems. We study the impact of droughts and heatwaves on the uptake of CO2 of different vegetation types at the global scale. We find that agricultural areas are generally strongly affected. Forests instead are not particularly sensitive to the events under scrutiny. This implies different water management strategies of forests but also a lack of sensitivity to remote-sensing-derived vegetation activity.
Lukas Brunner, Angeline G. Pendergrass, Flavio Lehner, Anna L. Merrifield, Ruth Lorenz, and Reto Knutti
Earth Syst. Dynam., 11, 995–1012, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-995-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-995-2020, 2020
Short summary
Short summary
In this study, we weight climate models by their performance with respect to simulating aspects of historical climate and their degree of interdependence. Our method is found to increase projection skill and to correct for structurally similar models. The weighted end-of-century mean warming (2081–2100 relative to 1995–2014) is 3.7 °C with a likely (66 %) range of 3.1 to 4.6 °C for the strong climate change scenario SSP5-8.5; this is a reduction of 0.4 °C compared with the unweighted mean.
Cited articles
Allen, M. R. and Ingram, W. J.: Constraints on future changes in climate and
the hydrologic cycle, Nature, 419, 228–232, 2002. a
Arora, V., Scinocca, J., Boer, G., Christian, J., Denman, K., Flato, G.,
Kharin, V., Lee, W., and Merryfield, W.: Carbon emission limits required to
satisfy future representative concentration pathways of greenhouse gases,
Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L05805, https://doi.org/10.1029/2010GL046270, 2011. a
Beusch, L., Gudmundsson, L., and Seneviratne, S. I.: Emulating Earth system model temperatures with MESMER: from global mean temperature trajectories to grid-point-level realizations on land, Earth Syst. Dynam., 11, 139–159, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-139-2020, 2020. a
Brogli, R., Sørland, S. L., Kröner, N., and Schär, C.: Causes of future Mediterranean precipitation decline depend on the season, Environ. Res. Lett., 14, 114017, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab4438, 2019. a
Castruccio, S., McInerney, D. J., Stein, M. L., Liu Crouch, F., Jacob, R. L.,
and Moyer, E. J.: Statistical emulation of climate model projections based on
precomputed GCM runs, J. Climate, 27, 1829–1844, 2014. a
Deser, C., Lehner, F., Rodgers, K., Ault, T., Delworth, T., DiNezio, P., Fiore, A., Frankignoul, C., Fyfe, J., Horton, D. E., Kay, J. E., Knutti, R., Lovenduski, N. S., Marotzke, J., McKinnon, K. A., Minobe, S., Randerson, J., Screen, J. A., Simpson, I. R., and Ting, M.: Insights from Earth system model initial-condition large ensembles and future prospects, Nat. Clim. Change, 10, 277–286, 2020. a
He, K., Zhang, X., Ren, S., and Sun, J.: Deep residual learning for image
recognition, in: Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and
Patern Recognition, 770–778, 2016. a
Heinze-Deml, C.: christinaheinze/latent-linear-adjustment- autoencoders:
Latent Linear Adjustment autoencoders v1.0, Zenodo [code], https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3957494,
2020a. a
Heinze-Deml, C.: Sample data of the CRCM5-LE for applications of the Linear
Latent Adjustment autoencoder, Zenodo [data], https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3949748,
2020b. a
Heinze-Deml, C.: Linear Latent Adjustment autoencoder: Pre-trained models, Zenodo [data], https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3950045, 2020c. a
Held, I. M. and Soden, B. J.: Robust responses of the hydrological cycle to
global warming, J. Climate, 19, 5686–5699, 2006. a
Jacob, D., Petersen, J., Eggert, B., Alias, A., Christensen, O. B., Bouwer,
L. M., Braun, A., Colette, A., Déqué, M., Georgievski, G.,
Georgopoulou, E., Gobiet, A., Menut, L., Nikulin, G., Haensler, A., Hempelmann, N., Jones, C., Keuler, K., Kovats, S., Kröner, N., Kotlarski, S., Kriegsmann, A., Martin, E., van Meijgaard, E., Moseley, C., Pfeifer, S., Preuschmann, S., Radermacher, C., Radtke, K., Rechid, D., Rounsevell, M., Samuelsson, P., Somot, S., Soussana, J.-F., Teichmann, C., Valentini, R., Vautard, R., Weber, B., Yiou, P.:
EURO-CORDEX: new high-resolution climate change projections for European
impact research, Reg. Environ. Change, 14, 563–578, 2014. a, b
Jézéquel, A., Yiou, P., and Radanovics, S.: Role of circulation in European
heatwaves using flow analogues, Clim. Dynam., 50, 1145–1159,
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-3667-0, 2018. a
Leduc, M., Mailhot, A., Frigon, A., Martel, J.-L., Ludwig, R., Brietzke, G. B.,
Giguère, M., Brissette, F., Turcotte, R., Braun, M., and Scinocca, J.: The ClimEx
project: A 50-member ensemble of climate change projections at 12-km
resolution over Europe and northeastern North America with the Canadian
Regional Climate Model (CRCM5), J. Appl. Meteorol.
Climatol., 58, 663–693, 2019. a, b, c, d, e
Martynov, A., Laprise, R., Sushama, L., Winger, K., Šeparović, L.,
and Dugas, B.: Reanalysis-driven climate simulation over CORDEX North America
domain using the Canadian Regional Climate Model, version 5: model
performance evaluation, Clim. Dynam., 41, 2973–3005, 2013. a
Pendergrass, A. G.: What precipitation is extreme?, Science, 360, 1072–1073,
2018. a
Pendergrass, A. G., Knutti, R., Lehner, F., Deser, C., and Sanderson, B. M.:
Precipitation variability increases in a warmer climate, Sci. Rep.,
7, 17966, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-17966-y, 2017. a
Rothenhäusler, D., Meinshausen, N., Buhlmann, P., and Peters, J.: Anchor
regression: heterogeneous data meets causality, arXiv [preprint], arXiv:1801.06229, 2018. a
Shi, X. and Durran, D. R.: The Response of Orographic Precipitation over Idealized Midlatitude Mountains Due to Global Increases in CO2, J. Climate, 27, 3938–3956, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00460.1, 2014. a
Sippel, S., Meinshausen, N., Merrifield, A., Lehner, F., Pendergrass, A. G.,
Fischer, E., and Knutti, R.: Uncovering the Forced Climate Response from a
Single Ensemble Member Using Statistical Learning, J. Climate, 32,
5677–5699, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-18-0882.1, 2019. a, b, c, d
von Trentini, F., Leduc, M., and Ludwig, R.: Assessing natural variability in
RCM signals: comparison of a multi model EURO-CORDEX ensemble with a
50-member single model large ensemble, Clim. Dynam., 53, 1963–1979,
2019. a
Wallace, J. M., Zhang, Y., and Renwick, J. A.: Dynamic contribution to
hemispheric mean temperature trends, Science, 270, 780–783, 1995. a
Wallace, J. M., Fu, Q., Smoliak, B. V., Lin, P., and Johanson, C. M.: Simulated versus observed patterns of warming over the extratropical Northern Hemisphere continents during the cold season, P. Natl.
Acad. Sci. USA, 109, 14337–14342, 2012. a
WCRP: CORDEX domains for model integrations, available at: https://cordex.org/domains/cordex-domain-description/ (last access: 10 August 2021), 2015. a
Yiou, P., Vautard, R., Naveau, P., and Cassou, C.: Inconsistency between
atmospheric dynamics and temperatures during the exceptional 2006/2007
fall/winter and recent warming in Europe, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L21808, https://doi.org/10.1029/2007GL031981,
2007. a
Zorita, E., Hughes, J. P., Lettemaier, D. P., and von Storch, H.: Stochastic
characterization of regional circulation patterns for climate model diagnosis
and estimation of local precipitation, J. Climate, 8, 1023–1042,
1995. a
Short summary
Quantifying dynamical and thermodynamical components of regional precipitation change is a key challenge in climate science. We introduce a novel statistical model (Latent Linear Adjustment Autoencoder) that combines the flexibility of deep neural networks with the robustness advantages of linear regression. The method enables estimation of the contribution of a coarse-scale atmospheric circulation proxy to daily precipitation at high resolution and in a spatially coherent manner.
Quantifying dynamical and thermodynamical components of regional precipitation change is a key...