The importance of horizontal model resolution on simulated precipitation in Europe – from global to regional models

Strandberg, Gustav; Lind, Petter

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-2-181-2021

Articles | Volume 2, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-2-181-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-2-181-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 2, issue 1

Research article

|

15 Mar 2021

Research article |

| 15 Mar 2021

The importance of horizontal model resolution on simulated precipitation in Europe – from global to regional models

Gustav Strandberg and Petter Lind

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Final revised paper (published on 15 Mar 2021)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 06 Aug 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

SC1: 'Comments on the method and some of the conclusions', Segolene Berthou, 04 Sep 2020
- SC2: 'Clarification of methods used and updated figures', Petter Lind, 25 Sep 2020
- AC2: 'Response to Segolene Berthou', Gustav Strandberg, 24 Nov 2020
AC1: 'New correct versions of figures 6-9', Gustav Strandberg, 14 Sep 2020
RC1: 'Review comments for "The importance of model resolution on simulated precipitation in Europe – from global to regional model"', Anonymous Referee #1, 05 Oct 2020
- AC3: 'Response to reviewer 1', Gustav Strandberg, 24 Nov 2020
RC2: 'Reviewer comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 13 Oct 2020
- AC4: 'Response to reviewer 2', Gustav Strandberg, 24 Nov 2020
- AC5: 'Correct response to reviewer 2', Gustav Strandberg, 24 Nov 2020
EC1: 'Submission of revision', Martin Singh, 14 Oct 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Gustav Strandberg on behalf of the Authors (24 Nov 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (05 Dec 2020) by Martin Singh

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (19 Dec 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (19 Jan 2021)

For final publication, the manuscript should be

accepted as is

accepted subject to technical corrections

accepted subject to minor revisions

reconsidered after major revisions

I would be willing to review the revised paper, if the editor considers it necessary.

I am not willing to review the revised paper.

rejected

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review comments for "The importance of model resolution on simulated precipitation in Europe – from global to regional model" by G. Strandberg and P. Lind

I would like to thank the authors for taking into account my comments and responding accordingly. The paper is now much clearer, and the results more robust now that the analyses are also performed on a common grid.

I list below a few additional minor comments. In addition to revising the clarity of the entire manuscript, I would particularly recommend to revise the abstract carefully, clarify its sentences (and correct the typos) so it summarises the findings of this study clearly. I wrote a few suggestions below. I also still found a few typos in the text.

L. 12: remove 'weather and', as NWP models are not the scope of this paper

L. 13: 'to represent it': what does 'it' refer to? Precipitation processes, or the changes in precipitation? I would suggest to clarify the entire sentence.

L. 14: 'in a range of' -> replace by 'in available'

L. 15-17: again here, the word resolution is used when it actually refers to grid spacing. Please specify at which latitude the grid spacing is given.

L. 23-24: 'where the largest contribution... and lowest': Does that refer to the differences? I would suggest to clarify.

L. 38: actually, according to Fig 11 and Fig 12, this is also true for PRIMAVERA, but it depends on the index considered. I would suggest to make the sentence more specific to the results shown in the paper.

L. 39: replace 'higher' by 'increasing'

L. 40: remove 'most often'

L. 46: remove 'similar'

L. 43-46: it depends on seasons. I would suggest to clarify the whole paragraph based on the results shown.

L 46: 'as different CORDEX RCMs driven by the same GCM may give different results' -> they do give different results, but again 1 RCM driven by different GCMs also do give different results (as shown in Fig 11), so do the differences between the RCM and the driving GCM really depend more on the RCM? From Fig 11, it doesn't seem to be the case, both play a role, with more or less impact depending on the regions and seasons. See also results from Vautard et al, 2020, now in press:
Vautard, R., Kadygrov, N., Iles, C., Boberg, F., Buonomo, E., Bülow, K., et al. (2020). Evaluation of the large EURO‐CORDEX regional climate model ensemble. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 125, e2019JD032344. Accepted Author Manuscript. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JD032344

L. 47: remove that sentence, as the other studies also look at the spread. The strength of this study is that it looks at many other indices, and includes CMIP6, as well as PRIMAVERA LR, so it adds information on CMIP6 versus CMIP5, and the impact of increasing resolution solely in an ensemble of GCMs.

L. 99: Note that Demory et al do not only compare with E-OBS but also with high resolution observations based on high density network. The published version is:
Demory, M.-E., Berthou, S., Fernández, J., Sørland, S. L., Brogli, R., Roberts, M. J., Beyerle, U., Seddon, J., Haarsma, R., Schär, C., Buonomo, E., Christensen, O. B., Ciarlo ̀, J. M., Fealy, R., Nikulin, G., Peano, D., Putrasahan, D., Roberts, C. D., Senan, R., Steger, C., Teichmann, C., and Vautard, R.: European daily precipitation according to EURO-CORDEX regional climate models (RCMs) and high-resolution global climate models (GCMs) from the High-Resolution Model Intercomparison Project (HighResMIP), Geosci. Model Dev., 13, 5485–5506, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-5485-2020, 2020.

L. 153: add 50 km mid-latitude grid spacing

L. 930: 'is given in the same format as'

Table 2: institue -> institute; Euro-CORDEX-> EURO-CORDEX

Fig. 2 and 3: specify in the caption that it is now the median which is shown.

Pay also attention to the use of the word 'different/difference', it is used many times in single sentences (e.g. L. 18, L. 554, many others) and makes the sentences hard to read.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (27 Jan 2021) by Martin Singh

AR by Gustav Strandberg on behalf of the Authors (04 Feb 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (12 Feb 2021) by Martin Singh

Short summary

Precipitation is a key climate variable with a large impact on society but also difficult to simulate as it depends largely on temporal and spatial scales. We look here at the effect of model resolution on precipitation in Europe, from coarse-scale global model to small-scale regional models. Higher resolution improves simulated precipitation generally, but individual models may over- or underestimate precipitation even at higher resolution.