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A New Regional Climate Model for POLAR‐CORDEX: Evaluation of a 30‐Year Hindcast with COSMO‐CLM 2 Over Antarctica
Author(s) -
Souverijns N.,
Gossart A.,
Demuzere M.,
Lenaerts J. T. M.,
Medley B.,
Gorodetskaya I. V.,
Vanden Broucke S.,
Lipzig N. P. M.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: atmospheres
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-8996
pISSN - 2169-897X
DOI - 10.1029/2018jd028862
Subject(s) - hindcast , climatology , downscaling , climate model , environmental science , climate change , satellite , polar , meteorology , atmospheric sciences , geology , geography , oceanography , engineering , aerospace engineering , physics , astronomy
Abstract Continent‐wide climate information over the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) is important to obtain accurate information of present climate and reduce uncertainties of the ice sheet mass balance response and resulting global sea level rise to future climate change. In this study, the COSMO‐CLM 2 Regional Climate Model is applied over the AIS and adapted for the specific meteorological and climatological conditions of the region. A 30‐year hindcast was performed and evaluated against observational records consisting of long‐term ground‐based meteorological observations, automatic weather stations, radiosoundings, satellite records, stake measurements and ice cores. Reasonable agreement regarding the surface and upper‐air climate is achieved by the COSMO‐CLM 2 model, comparable to the performance of other state‐of‐the‐art climate models over the AIS. Meteorological variability of the surface climate is adequately simulated, and biases in the radiation and surface mass balance are small. The presented model therefore contributes as a new member to the COordinated Regional Downscaling EXperiment project over the AIS (POLAR‐CORDEX) and the CORDEX‐CORE initiative.