Europe’s first continent-wide 2.2 km rain projections
A 2.2 km convection-permitting model projects wetter northern winters and drier summers, with summer hourly extremes unlike coarser GCMs.
Source
Europe-wide precipitation projections at convection permitting scale with the Unified Model
Study at a glance
- Design
- Computational / modelling — 2.2 km Unified Model CPM nested in HadGEM3 for Europe present/future RCP8.5 rain
- N
- Single Europe-wide CPM experiment set (hindcast 1999–2008 + future); not a sample N
- Population
- European precipitation in convection-permitting climate simulations
- Outcome
- Mean and extreme precipitation changes (wetter northern winters; drier summers)
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Europe’s first continent-wide 2.2 km rain projections
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
Present-climate GCM years are 1999–2008.
The 10-year 25 km GCM simulations include both present- (1999–2008) and future-climate (end-of-c.21) simulations.
Over land, the models typically produce 30% more precipitation than E-OBS.
30 % more precipitation than observations from E-OBS.
What they did
Authors nested Met Office Unified Model 2.2 km CPM runs in ERA-Interim (1999–2008 hindcast) and 25 km HadGEM3 present/future RCP8.5 simulations, then compared mean rain, heavy-event frequency, and seasonality with E-OBS.
What they found
This is the first CPM used for Europe-wide future projections. Northern winters get wetter with more extremes; summers dry over Northern and Central Europe. Continental summer hourly extremes are more muted than in UK CPM work and not significant versus year-to-year noise. Land models are ~30% wetter than E-OBS.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Only 10-year time slices and a single GCM/RCP8.5 path; no intermediate nest; E-OBS under-samples hourly extremes; Central European summer-extreme decline is not significant.
Key terms
- Convection-permitting model
- Kilometer-scale climate model that does not parameterize deep convection.
- HadGEM3 N512
- 25 km global model providing lateral boundaries.
- E-OBS
- European daily land precipitation analysis used for bias checks.
- RCP8.5
- High-end greenhouse-gas scenario used for the future slice.
- Grid-point storm
- Unrealistic convective cloudburst at the scale of a coarse grid cell.
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Europe CPM grid spacing:
Common questions
CPM grid spacing?
2.2 km across Europe.
Future scenario?
RCP8.5 end-of-21st-century versus 1999–2008.
Winter vs summer headline?
Wetter northern winters; drier northern/central summers.
Observational benchmark?
E-OBS 1999–2008.
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