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Attribution of snowpack errors to simulated temperature and precipitation in four CMIP6 models over the contiguous United States

Presentation Date
Tuesday, December 14, 2021 at 4:00pm
Location
Online Only
Authors

Author

Abstract

Snow water equivalent (SWE), temperature, and precipitation biases and trends in the atmosphere-land simulations of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model version 1 (E3SMv1) in comparison to the Community Earth System Model version 2 (CESM2), the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Climate Model version 4 (GFDL-CM4), and the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) ModelE version 2 are evaluated over the contiguous United States (CONUS) using the ground measurement-based University of Arizona (UA) product. The highest magnitude SWE, temperature, and precipitation biases are in the Western CONUS. SWE errors are attributed to temperature and precipitation errors through multiple linear regressions of normalized errors. The regression coefficients represent the sensitivities to these quantities. These regressions reveal that SWE errors are more sensitive to temperature errors throughout the CONUS. Model SWE and temperature trends are generally opposite from UA product trends in the Western CONUS. SWE trend errors are also attributed to temperature and precipitation trend errors using multiple linear regressions of normalized trend errors. These regressions show that SWE trend errors are more sensitive to precipitation than to temperature at elevations > 1500 m in the Western CONUS. Thus, the sensitivity to temperature and precipitation differ for SWE errors and its trend errors. Additionally, the SWE trend errors are more sensitive to temperature and precipitation in the fully coupled atmosphere-ocean simulations than in the atmosphere-land simulations. These results indicate that both errors in temperature and precipitation are important to SWE errors over the CONUS.

Category
Global Environmental Change
Funding Program Area(s)