Journal article
Evaluating global climate models for the Pacific island region
DB Irving, SE Perkins, JR Brown, AS Gupta, AF Moise, BF Murphy, LC Muir, RA Colman, SB Power, FP Delage, JN Brown
Climate Research | INTER-RESEARCH | Published : 2011
DOI: 10.3354/cr01028
Abstract
While the practice of reporting multi-model ensemble climate projections is well established, there is much debate regarding the most appropriate methods of evaluating model performance, for the purpose of eliminating and/or weighting models based on skill. The CMIP3 model evaluation undertaken by the Pacific Climate Change Science Program (PCCSP) is presented here. This includes a quantitative assessment of the ability of the models to simulate 3 climate variables: (1) surface air temperature, (2) precipitation and (3) surface wind); 3 climate features: (4) the South Pacific Convergence Zone, (5) the Intertropical Convergence Zone and (6) the West Pacific Monsoon; as well as (7) the El Niño..
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Funding Acknowledgements
This research was conducted with the support of the PCCSP, a program funded by AusAID, in collaboration with the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, and delivered by the Bureau of Meteorology and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). We thank the PCMDI and the World Climate Research Program's Working Group on Coupled Modelling for their roles in making available the CMIP3 multi-model dataset. Support of this dataset is provided by the Office of Science, US Department of Energy. More details on model documentation are available at the PCMDI website (www-pcmdi.llnl.gov). We also thank J Richmond for drafting the map shown in Fig. 1 and J. Bhend for his insightful comments on many aspects of the study methodology.