Open AccessThe Impact of Incongruous Lake Temperatures on Regional Climate Extremes Downscaled from the CMIP5 Archive Using the WRF Model
Author(s) -
Tanya L. Spero,
Christopher G. Nolte,
Jared H. Bowden,
Megan S. Mallard,
Jerold A. Herwehe
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of climate
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.315
H-Index - 287
eISSN - 1520-0442
pISSN - 0894-8755
DOI - 10.1175/jcli-d-15-0233.1
Subject(s) - downscaling , weather research and forecasting model , climatology , environmental science , precipitation , mesoscale meteorology , climate model , climate change , general circulation model , meteorology , geology , oceanography , geography
The impact of incongruous lake temperatures is demonstrated using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model to downscale global climate fields. Unrealistic lake temperatures prescribed by the default WRF configuration cause obvious biases near the lakes and also affect predicted extremes hundreds of kilometers from the lakes, especially during winter. Using these default temperatures for the Great Lakes in winter creates a thermally induced wave in the modeled monthly average sea level pressure field, which reaches southern Florida. Differences of more than 0.5 K in monthly average daily maximum 2-m temperature occur along that wave during winter. Noteworthy changes to temperature variability, precipitation, and mesoscale circulation also occur when the default method is used for downscaling. Consequently, improperly setting lake temperatures for downscaling could result in misinterpreting changes in regional climate and adversely affect applications reliant on downscaled data, even in areas remote from the lakes.