A novel bias correction methodology for climate impact simulations

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • S. Sippel - , Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, ETH Zurich (Author)
  • F. E.L. Otto - , University of Oxford (Author)
  • M. Forkel - , Junior Professorship in Environmental Remote Sensing, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (Author)
  • M. R. Allen - , University of Oxford (Author)
  • B. P. Guillod - , University of Oxford (Author)
  • M. Heimann - , Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (Author)
  • M. Reichstein - , Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (Author)
  • S. I. Seneviratne - , ETH Zurich (Author)
  • K. Thonicke - , Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (Author)
  • M. D. Mahecha - , Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle—Jena—Leipzig (Author)

Abstract

Understanding, quantifying and attributing the impacts of extreme weather and climate events in the terrestrial biosphere is crucial for societal adaptation in a changing climate. However, climate model simulations generated for this purpose typically exhibit biases in their output that hinder any straightforward assessment of impacts. To overcome this issue, various bias correction strategies are routinely used to alleviate climate model deficiencies, most of which have been criticized for physical inconsistency and the nonpreservation of the multivariate correlation structure. In this study, we introduce a novel, resampling-based bias correction scheme that fully preserves the physical consistency and multivariate correlation structure of the model output. This procedure strongly improves the representation of climatic extremes and variability in a large regional climate model ensemble (HadRM3P, <a hrefCombining double low lineclimateprediction.net/weatherathome targetCombining double low lineblank>climateprediction.net/weatherathome</a>), which is illustrated for summer extremes in temperature and rainfall over Central Europe. Moreover, we simulate biosphere&ndash;atmosphere fluxes of carbon and water using a terrestrial ecosystem model (LPJmL) driven by the bias-corrected climate forcing. The resampling-based bias correction yields strongly improved statistical distributions of carbon and water fluxes, including the extremes. Our results thus highlight the importance of carefully considering statistical moments beyond the mean for climate impact simulations. In conclusion, the present study introduces an approach to alleviate climate model biases in a physically consistent way and demonstrates that this yields strongly improved simulations of climate extremes and associated impacts in the terrestrial biosphere. A wider uptake of our methodology by the climate and impact modelling community therefore seems desirable for accurately quantifying changes in past, current and future extremes.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)71-88
Number of pages18
Journal Earth system dynamics / European Geosciences Union
Volume7
Issue number1
Publication statusPublished - 2 Feb 2016
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0003-0363-9697/work/142252094

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