Precipitation Climatology in an Ensemble of CORDEX-Africa Regional Climate Simulations

Abstract An ensemble of regional climate simulations is analyzed to evaluate the ability of 10 regional climate models (RCMs) and their ensemble average to simulate precipitation over Africa. All RCMs use a similar domain and spatial resolution of ~50 km and are driven by the ECMWF Interim Re-Analysis (ERA-Interim) (1989–2008). They constitute the first set of simulations in the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment in Africa (CORDEX-Africa) project. Simulated precipitation is evaluated at a range of time scales, including seasonal means, and annual and diurnal cycles, against a number of detailed observational datasets. All RCMs simulate the seasonal mean and annual cycle quite accurately, although…

• UO
  University of Delaware
• UD
  Université du Québec à Montréal
• MD
  Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación
• EC
  European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
• GS
  Goddard Space Flight Center
• CF
  Centrum fÖr Personcentrerad Vård