The CORDEX-FPS in Southeastern South America: a comparative study of statistical and dynamical downscaling models in simulating daily extreme precipitation events

BETTOLLI MARIA LAURA; SOLMAN, S.; PORFIRIO DA ROCHA, R; GUTIERREZ LLORENTE, JM; LLOPART, M; FERNANDEZ, JESUS; LAVIN GULLON, A; COPPOLA, E; CHOU, S; DOYLE, M; FEIJOO, M; HUTH, R; BARREIRO M; OLMO, MATIAS; VIANNA CUADRA, S; MACHADO, L; FARNETI, R; CARNEIRO, D

Beijing

Conferencia; ICRC-CORDEX 2019; 2019

CORDEX

Extreme rainfall events are of key importance for southeastern South America (SESA) due to their high impact on the variety of socioeconomic activities taken place in this densely populated region. The Flagship Pilot Study in South America endorsed by CORDEX seeks to promote inter-institutional collaboration and further networking in the South America CORDEX domain with focus on these extreme events, their modelling and understanding. This work presents an overview of this initiative along with a summary of the work carried out so far in the different working groups and a comparison of their outcomes. One of the main aims of this initiative is to study multi-scale processes and interactions most conductive to the extreme events through both statistical and dynamical downscaling techniques, including convection-permitting simulations. To this end, a targeted experiment was designed considering the warm season from October 2009 to March 2010, a season with a record number of extreme precipitation events within SESA. Also, three individual extreme events within that season were chosen as case studies for analyzing specific regional processes and sensitivity to resolutions. Four dynamical and eight statistical downscaling models from different institutions contributed to the experiment. In this work, we present the analysis of the capability of the set of downscaling methods in simulating daily precipitation during the 2009-2010 warm season, with particular emphasis on extreme events. Results show that all models capture the extreme events although with a considerable spread in accumulated daily values and location of daily extremes.