Convection-permitting regional climate simulations over Tibetan Plateau: re-initialization versus spectral nudging

Two regional climate simulation experiments (spectral nudging and re-initialization) at convection-permitting scale are conducted using the WRF model driven by the 4th generation Global Reanalysis data (ERA5) from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts over the Tibetan Plateau (TP). The surface air temperature (T2m) and the precipitation in summer during 2016-2018 are evaluated against the in-situ station observations and the Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP) dataset. The results show that both experiments as well as ERA5 can successfully capture the spatial distribution and the daily variation of T2m and precipitation, with reasonable cold bias for temperature and dry bias for precipitation when compared with the station observations. In addition, the diurnal cycle of precipitation is investigated, indicating that both experiments tend to simulate the afternoon precipitation peak in advance and postpone the night precipitation peak. The precipitation bias is reduced by using the spectral nudging technique, especially at night and early morning. Both WRF experiments outperform ERA5 in reproducing the diurnal cycle of precipitation amount. Possible causes for the differences between the two experiments are also analyzed. In the re-initialization experiment, the daytime net shortwave radiation contributes a lot to the cold biases of Tmax, and the stronger vertically integrated moisture flux convergence leads to more precipitation compared with the spectral nudging experiment over the central and southeastern TP. These results can provide valuable guidance for further fine-scale simulation studies over the TP.

Automated summary

Two regional climate simulation experiments using the WRF model were conducted over the Tibetan Plateau, showing both experiments were able to simulate the spatial distribution and daily variation of T2m and precipitation, with some biases in temperature and precipitation.