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Evaluation of CMIP5 20th century climate simulations for the Pacific Northwest USA

ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University

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Title Evaluation of CMIP5 20th century climate simulations for the Pacific Northwest USA
Names Rupp, David E. (creator)
Abatzoglou, John T. (creator)
Hegewisch, Katherine C. (creator)
Mote, Philip W. (creator)
Date Issued 2013-10-16 (iso8601)
Note This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the American Geophysical Union and can be found at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2169-8996.
Abstract Monthly temperature and precipitation data from 41 global climate models (GCMs)
of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) were compared to
observations for the 20th century, with a focus on the United States Pacific Northwest
(PNW) and surrounding region. A suite of statistics, or metrics, was calculated, that
included correlation and variance of mean seasonal spatial patterns, amplitude of seasonal
cycle, diurnal temperature range, annual- to decadal-scale variance, long-term persistence,
and regional teleconnections to El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Performance, or
credibility, was assessed based on the GCMs’ abilities to reproduce the observed metrics.
GCMs were ranked in their credibility using two methods. The first simply treated all metrics
equally. The second method considered two properties of the metrics: (1) redundancy of
information (dependence) among metrics, and (2) confidence in the reliability of an individual
metric for accurately ranking models. Confidence was related to how robust the estimate
of the metric was to ensemble size, given that for most of the models only a small number
of ensemble members (i.e., realizations of the 20th century) were available. A cursory
comparison with 24 CMIP3 models revealed few differences between the two generations
of models with respect to the statistics analyzed.
Genre Article
Identifier Rupp, D. E., J. T. Abatzoglou, K. C. Hegewisch, and P. W. Mote (2013), Evaluation of CMIP5 20th century climate simulations for the Pacific Northwest USA, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 118, 10,884–10,906. doi:10.1002/jgrd.50843

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