Statistical Downscaling of General Circulation Model Outputs to Precipitation Accounting for Non-Stationarities in Predictor-Predictand Relationships.

• Main Authors: D A Sachindra, B J C Perera
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2016-01-01
• Series: PLoS ONE
• Online Access: http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC5173373?pdf=render

This paper presents a novel approach to incorporate the non-stationarities characterised in the GCM outputs, into the Predictor-Predictand Relationships (PPRs) in statistical downscaling models. In this approach, a series of 42 PPRs based on multi-linear regression (MLR) technique were determined for each calendar month using a 20-year moving window moved at a 1-year time step on the predictor data obtained from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data archive and observations of precipitation at 3 stations located in Victoria, Australia, for the period 1950-2010. Then the relationships between the constants and coefficients in the PPRs and the statistics of reanalysis data of predictors were determined for the period 1950-2010, for each calendar month. Thereafter, using these relationships with the statistics of the past data of HadCM3 GCM pertaining to the predictors, new PPRs were derived for the periods 1950-69, 1970-89 and 1990-99 for each station. This process yielded a non-stationary downscaling model consisting of a PPR per calendar month for each of the above three periods for each station. The non-stationarities in the climate are characterised by the long-term changes in the statistics of the climate variables and above process enabled relating the non-stationarities in the climate to the PPRs. These new PPRs were then used with the past data of HadCM3, to reproduce the observed precipitation. It was found that the non-stationary MLR based downscaling model was able to produce more accurate simulations of observed precipitation more often than conventional stationary downscaling models developed with MLR and Genetic Programming (GP).