Abstract
An ensemble of regional climate modelling simulations from the European framework project PRUDENCE are compared across European sub-regions with observed daily precipitation from the European Climate Assessment dataset by characterising precipitation in terms of probability density functions (PDFs). Models that robustly describe the observations for the control period (1961–1990) in given regions as well as across regions are identified, based on the overlap of normalised PDFs, and then validated, using a method based on bootstrapping with replacement. We also compare the difference between the scenario period (2071–2100) and the control period precipitation using all available models. By using a metric quantifying the deviation over the entire PDF, we find a clearly marked increase in the contribution to the total precipitation from the more intensive events and a clearly marked decrease for days with light precipitation in the scenario period. This change is tested to be robust and found in all models and in all sub-regions. We find a detectable increase that scales with increased warming, making the increase in the PDF difference a relative indicator of climate change level. Furthermore, the crossover point separating decreasing from increasing contributions to the normalised precipitation spectrum when climate changes does not show any significant change which is in accordance with expectations assuming a simple analytical fit to the precipitation spectrum.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank for financial support from the European Union through the ENSEMBLES project (contract number GOCE-CT-2003-505539). Support for William. J. Gutowski’s participation was provided by US National Science Foundation Grant ATM-0633567. Data have been provided through the PRUDENCE data archive, funded by the EU, and the European Climate Assessment (ECA) project (supported by the Network of European Meteorological Services EUMETNET). ECA data are available at http://eca.knmi.nl.
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Boberg, F., Berg, P., Thejll, P. et al. Improved confidence in climate change projections of precipitation evaluated using daily statistics from the PRUDENCE ensemble. Clim Dyn 32, 1097–1106 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-008-0446-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-008-0446-y