Bias correction methods for regional climate model simulations considering the distributional parametric uncertainty underlying the observations

In this paper, we present a comparative study of bias correction methods for regional climate model simulations considering the distributional parametric uncertainty underlying the observations/models. In traditional bias correction schemes, the statistics of the simulated model outputs are adjusted to those of the observation data. However, the model output and the observation data are only one case (i.e., realization) out of many possibilities, rather than being sampled from the entire population of a certain distribution due to internal climate variability. This issue has not been considered in the bias correction schemes of the existing climate change studies. Here, three approaches are employed to explore this issue, with the intention of providing a practical tool for bias correction of daily rainfall for use in hydrologic models ((1) conventional method, (2) non-informative Bayesian method, and (3) informative Bayesian method using a Weather Generator (WG) data). The results show some plausible uncertainty ranges of precipitation after correcting for the bias of RCM precipitation. The informative Bayesian approach shows a narrower uncertainty range by approximately 25-45% than the non-informative Bayesian method after bias correction for the baseline period. This indicates that the prior distribution derived from WG may assist in reducing the uncertainty associated with parameters. The implications of our results are of great importance in hydrological impact assessments of climate change because they are related to actions for mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Since this is a proof of concept study that mainly illustrates the logic of the analysis for uncertainty-based bias correction, future research exploring the impacts of uncertainty on climate impact assessments and how to utilize uncertainty while planning mitigation and adaptation strategies is still needed. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.