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Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections

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  • The climate data factory
  • The Climate Data Factory

Abstract and Figures

This document is an overview of the different data sets provided by the climate data factory on its site theclimatedatafactory.com. It is intended for users who wish to apply these data in climate change impact studies, from local to global scale. This document describes essential information about data origin, processing methods, metadata information and assumption and limitations.
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T E C H N I C A L REPORT
BI A S A D J U S T I N G C L I M A T E
M OD E L P R O J E C T I O N S
| FEBRUARY 2018
Technical Report
Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections
Florian Cochard - Harilaos Loukos - Thomas Noël
Version 1.0
February 2018
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 1
Cover photo: Mountains and Clouds by rachel_thecat / CC BY-SA 2.0
Please cite this report as:
the climate data factory ”2018), Technical report: bias adjusting climate model
projections.
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 2
Table of contents
Table of contents 2
Intent of this Document 4
Data Field Descriptions 5
Data Origin and Methods 7
Introduction 7
Methods 8
Datasets 8
CMIP5 8
CORDEX 8
Preprocessing 9
Remapping 9
Bias Adjustment 10
Delta methods 10
Quantile matching methods 10
Standardization 11
Quality Control 12
QA-DKRZ 12
In-House 12
Spatial Extraction 13
Country-level 13
City-level 14
Considerations and Recommended Use 15
Recommended Use 15
Assumptions and Limitations 15
References 16
Dataset and Document Revision History 20
Annex 21
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 3
 
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 4
1. Intent of this Document
This document is an overview of the different data sets provided by the climate data
factory on its site theclimatedatafactory.com. It is intended for users who wish to
apply these data in climate change impact studies, from local to global scale. This
document describes essential information about data origin, processing methods,
metadata information and assumption and limitations. References and
supplementary information are provided at the end of this document.
The data sets on the climate data factory are meant to support users involved in
climate change adaptation topics, such as impact researchers, adaptation
practitioners, urban planners or energy professionals, conducting local, regional or
global studies. Each data set is remapped on a reference grid, bias-adjusted for direct
use in impacts studies and quality controlled to comply with climate communitys
standards, data consistency and metadata. Dont hesitate to contact us to share
insights and comments at: support@theclimatedatafactory.com.
Website URL:
https://theclimatedatafactory.com
Technical point of contact:
Thomas Noel thomas[at]theclimatedatafactory.com 
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 5
2. Data Field Descriptions
Variable name, units
tas
Daily Near-Surface Air Temperature
Degrees Kelvin
Spatial resolution
0.50 degrees x 0.50 degrees ”CMIP5)
0.11 degrees x 0.11 degrees ”EURO-CORDEX)
Temporal resolution
Daily from 1951-01-01 to 2100-12-31
Units are in days since a reference date ”e.g., 1850-01-01). The
reference date varies by model and experiment, and is based on
the reference date used in the corresponding CMIP5 GCM or
CORDEX RCM experiment.
Coverage
Country to city level
Variable name, units
tasmin
Daily Minimum Near-Surface Air Temperature
Degrees Kelvin
Spatial resolution
0.50 degrees x 0.50 degrees ”CMIP5)
0.11 degrees x 0.11 degrees ”EURO-CORDEX)
Temporal resolution
Daily from 1951-01-01 to 2100-12-31
Units are in days since a reference date ”e.g., 1850-01-01). The
reference date varies by model and experiment, and is based on
the reference date used in the corresponding CMIP5 GCM or
EURO-CORDEX RCM experiment.
Coverage
Country to city level
Variable name, units
tasmax
Daily Maximum Near-Surface Air Temperature
Degrees Kelvin
Spatial resolution
0.50 degrees x 0.50 degrees ”CMIP5)
0.11 degrees x 0.11 degrees ”EURO-CORDEX)
Temporal resolution
Daily from 1951-01-01 to 2100-12-31
Units are in days since a reference date ”e.g., 1850-01-01). The
reference date varies by model and experiment, and is based on
the reference date used in the corresponding CMIP5 GCM or
CORDEX RCM experiment.
Coverage
Country to city level
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 6
Variable name, units
pr
Precipitation ”mean of the daily precipitation rate)
kg m-2 s-1
Spatial resolution
0.50 degrees x 0.50 degrees ”CMIP5)
0.11 degrees x 0.11 degrees ”EURO-CORDEX)
Temporal resolution
Daily from 1951-01-01 to 2100-12-31
Units are in days since a reference date ”e.g., 1850-01-01). The
reference date varies by model and experiment, and is based on
the reference date used in the corresponding CMIP5 GCM or
CORDEX RCM experiment.
Coverage
Country to city level
rsds
Daily Surface Downwelling Shortwave Radiation
W m-2
0.50 degrees x 0.50 degrees ”CMIP5)
0.44degrees x 0.44 degrees ”EURO-CORDEX)
Daily from 1951-01-01 to 2100-12-31
Units are in days since a reference date ”e.g., 1850-01-01). The
reference date varies by model and experiment, and is based on
the reference date used in the corresponding CMIP5 GCM or
CORDEX RCM experiment.
Country to city level
Variable name, units
sfcWind
Daily Near-Surface Wind Speed
m s-1
Spatial resolution
0.50 degrees x 0.50 degrees ”CMIP5)
0.11 degrees x 0.11 degrees ”EURO-CORDEX)
Temporal resolution
Daily from 1951-01-01 to 2100-12-31
Units are in days since a reference date ”e.g., 1850-01-01). The
reference date varies by model and experiment, and is based on
the reference date used in the corresponding CMIP5 GCM or
CORDEX RCM experiment.
Coverage
Country to city level
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 7
3. Data Origin and Methods
3.1. Introduction
The data sets on the climate data factory include remapped, bias-adjusted and quality
controlled climate scenarios for 66 countries and more than 4,300 cities worldwide.
They are derived from the General Circulation Model ”GCM) and Regional Climate
Model ”RCM) runs conducted under 2 model intercomparison projects: the Coupled
Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 ”CMIP5) ”Taylor et al. 2012) and the Coordinated
Regional Downscaling Intercomparison project ”CORDEX) ”Giorgi et al. 2009), and forced
under 2 greenhouse gas emissions scenarios known as Representative Concentration
Pathways ”RCPs) ”Moss et al. 2010). The CMIP5 climate projections were used for the
Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ”IPCC AR5).
Raw CMIP5 and CORDEX archives are extracted from the Earth System Grid
Federation ”ESGF) data portal with Synda, a software developed by the Institut Pierre
Simon Laplace.
A climate model is an approximate representation of the real world climate drivers.
This simplification is due to incomplete understanding of climate physics and is
required for computational purpose. This inevitably introduces random models errors
in models simulations when their statistical properties ”e.g., mean, variance) are
compared to climatological observations, thus limiting the use of raw models data in
impact studies.
The Cumulative Distribution Function transform ”CDF-t) method ”Michelangeli et al.,
2009, Vrac et al., 2016, Famien et al., 2017) used in generating data sets on the climate
data factory is a bias-adjustment method we co-developed with academics to address
climate models limitations. CDF-t is a variant of the quantile mapping ”QM) method
which consists in comparing the cumulative distribution function ”CDF) of a climate
variable ”e.g., temperature) at large scale ”e.g., from GCM) to the CDF of the same
variable at a local scale. CDF-t method has been extensively used in the literature and
validated for many variables ”e.g., Kallache et al., 2011; Vrac et al., 2012; Lavaysse et
al., 2012; Vautard et al., 2013; Vrac and Friederichs, 2015).
We have applied the CDF-t method to create a data archive of bias-adjusted CMIP5
and EURO-CORDEX climate projections. The purpose of these data sets lies in bridging
the gap between raw models data and climate change impact studies. CFD-t method
was applied on 20 CMIP5 GCMs ”Table 1 in Annex) and 18 EURO-CORDEX RCMs ”Table
2 in Annex) for the periods from 2006 to 2100 ”Climate Projections) under 2 RCP
scenarios ”RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) and from 1951 through 2005 ”Historical) for the
historical experiment. The observation-based reference dataset for CMIP5 is the
WATCH Forcing Data methodology applied to ERA Interim reanalysis data ”WFDEI;
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 8
Weedon et al., 2014) from 1979 to 2012 on a 0.5° x 0.5° grid. The observation-based
reference dataset for EURO-CORDEX is the Mesoscale Analysis System ”MESAN;
Landelius et al. 2016) from 1989 to 2012 on a 0.11° x 0.11° grid. The final result is a
data archive size of more than 5 TB.
This document provides a description of the data origin and the CDF-t method as
applied in the bias-adjustment of the CMIP5 GCMs and EURO-CORDEX RCMs data. The
code for CDF-t method is freely available as an R package ”link:
https://www.rdocumentation.org/packages/CDF-t/versions/1.0.1/topics/CDF-t).
Additional technical details may also be found in Michelangeli et al., 2009 and Vrac et
al. 2016.
3.2. Methods
3.2.1. Datasets
CMIP5
Climate Model Data: we compiled 39 climate simulations from 22 CMIP5 GCMs and 2
RCP scenarios ”RCP4.5 and RCP8.5; see Table 1 in Annex) . Each of the climate
1
simulations include daily near-surface temperature, daily maximum near-surface
temperature, daily minimum near-surface temperature, daily precipitation, daily
near-surface wind speed and daily surface downwelling shortwave radiation for the
periods from 1951 through 2005 ”Historical) and from 2006 to 2100 ”Climate
Projections). Unless specified, all 39 climate simulations are bias-adjusted through the
same procedures.
Observational Climate Data: we used the WATCH Forcing Data methodology applied
to ERA Interim reanalysis data ”WFDEI; Weedon et al., 2014) as the observation-based
reference dataset. This dataset is based on the European Centre for Medium-range
Weather Forecasts ”ECMWF) ERA-Interim reanalysis. It includes eight meteorological
variables at 3-hourly time steps, and as daily averages from 1979 to 2012, for the
global land surface at 0.5° x 0.5° resolution, including Antarctica ”Weedon et al., 2014).
We used the 0.5° x 0.5° resolution and historical data from 1979 to 2012 for daily
near-surface temperature, daily maximum near-surface temperature, daily minimum
near-surface temperature, daily precipitation, daily near-surface wind speed and daily
surface downwelling shortwave radiation.
CORDEX
Climate Model Data: we compiled 18 climate simulations from 4 CORDEX RCMs forced
by 5 GCMs and 2 RCP scenarios ”RCP4.5 and RCP8.5; see Table 2 in Annex). Each of the
climate simulations include daily temperature, maximum temperature, minimum
1 17 GCMs for RCP4.5 projection and 22 GCMs for RCP8.5 projection.
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 9
temperature, precipitation, wind speed and solar radiation for the periods from 1951
through 2005 ”Historical) and from 2006 to 2100 ”Climate Projections). Unless
specified, all 18 climate simulations are bias-adjusted and quality controlled with the
same procedures.
Observational Climate Data: we used the Mesoscale Analysis System ”MESAN;
Häggmark et al., 2000) as the observation-based reference dataset. MESAN is a system
for operational mesoscale univariate analysis of selected meteorological parameters
”see Landelius et al. 2016 for more information). We used the 0.11° x 0.11° resolution
and historical data from 1989 to 2012 for daily near-surface temperature, daily
maximum near-surface temperature, daily minimum near-surface temperature, daily
precipitation and daily near-surface wind speed. Daily surface downwelling shortwave
radiation was missing from MESAN, so we used a 0.44° x 0.44° resolution grid based
on WFDEI data.
3.2.2. Preprocessing
Raw CMIP5 and CORDEX archives are extracted from the Earth System Grid
Federation ”ESGF) data portal with Synda, a software developed by the Institut Pierre
Simon Laplace. Models data are first checked to make sure there are neither technical
nor numerical bugs, and to validate metadata integrity.
3.2.3. Remapping
Models intercomparison, bias adjustment or comparison of output model simulations
with observations require spatial interpolation of models data on a reference grid. The
remapping step consists in spatially interpolating raw daily models data to a finer
reference-grid resolution. We use the Climate Data Operators ”CDO) ”CDO, 2016)
software from the Max Planck Institute which gathers various algorithms for
interpolation used by the scientific community.
Only CMIP5 GCMs are remapped on the 0.5° x 0.5° grid of WFDEI. Indeed, all raw
CORDEX variables are already available on the 0.11° x 0.11° grid from MESAN, except
rsds variable which is missing from MESAN observations. Hence, the rsds variable from
CORDEX 0.11° x 0.11° is remapped on the CORDEX grid at 0.44° x 0.44° resolution ”see
Figure 1).
From one variable to another, different interpolation methods are used, depending on
the trend ”linear, non-linear) or distribution ”gaussian, non gaussian, etc.) of the CMIP5
variable:
tas, tasmin, tasman and sfcWind are interpolated with a bicubic method
pr and rsds are interpolated with a conservative method ”first and second
order)
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3.2.4. Bias Adjustment
Models have skills in simulating future climate but show systematic biases when
statistically compared to climatological observations. Bias-adjustment methods are
used to calibrate model simulations to ensure their statistical properties are similar
to those of the corresponding observed values ”climate4impacts.com glossary). There
are in the litterature two types of approaches to adjust climate model outputs:
Delta methods are the simplest and consist in adjusting the average simulation
outputs
Quantile matching methods are most advanced and commonly found in the
litterature. Rather than focusing solely on the average outputs, they aim at
correcting the complete statistical distribution of model variables.
Delta methods
Delta methods ”Hay et al., 2000; Lenderink et al., 2007; Gudmundsson et al., 2012)
consist in disturbing time-series of simulated variables through constant addition or
multiplication of an adjustment coefficient. These methods can whether adjust the
mean and/or the standard deviation of a simulated variable. However, this basic
approach can only be used with time-series of observations, and arent appropriate to
adjust the simulated climate variability.
Quantile matching methods
Quantile mapping ”QM) ”Wood et al., 2004; Maurer et al., 2007; Déqué et al., 2007;
Christensen et al., 2008; Lopez et al., 2009) are more advanced adjustment methods
and consist in comparing the cumulative distribution function ”CDF) of a variable ”e.g.,
temperature) at a global scale ”e.g., from GCM) to the CDF of the variable at a
local-scale ”e.g., station). Different variations of the QM approach are referenced in
the literature of which Quantile Delta Mapping ”Cannon et al., 2015), Scaled
Distribution Mapping ”Switanek et al., 2016) and Linear Regression Quantile Mapping
”Passow et al., 2017). For a review of methods see Galmarini et al 2018).
We use a variant of QM method called Cumulative Distribution Function transform
”CDF-t). While standard QM approach only projects the CDF of a simulated large-scale
variable ”i.e., from GCM) onto the CDF of the historical to compute and match
quantiles, CDF-t accounts for the evolution of the large-scale CDF from historical to
future time period ”Michelangeli et al., 2009, Vrac et al., 2012). As a result, the adjusted
climate projections have the same CDF as the observations data, and potential biases
in the statistical structure of the raw climate model simulations are removed.
CDF-t was first used to adjust wind variable ”Michelangeli et al., 2009) and is now
referenced in more than 100 peer-reviewed publications to adjust different sets of
variables such as temperature, precipitation or solar radiation ”e.g., Oettli et al., 2011 ;
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 11
Vrac et al., 2012 ; Lavaysse et al., 2012 ; Colette et al., 2012 ; Tisseuil et al., 2012 ; Vrac
et al., 2016).
We applied CDF-t to 5 variables ”i.e., tas, tasmin, tasmax, rsds, sfcWind) over the
period 1951-2100 ”historical, RCP4.5, RCP8.5). The precipitation variable ”i.e., pr) was
adjusted with an updated version of CDF-t referred to as Singularity Stochastic
Removal ”SSR) which considers rainfall occurrence and intensity issues ”see Vrac et
al., 2016 for more details).
Figure 1. Processing chain from raw to adjusted climate models data
3.2.5. Standardization
Standardization consists in rewriting output data files and related metadata to comply
with the climate communitys standards ”e.g., the Climate and Forecast metadata
convention and the Data Reference Syntax). We use the Climate Model Output
Rewriter 2 ”CMOR 2) library.
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 12
3.2.6. Quality Control
For each bias-adjusted variable, we check data compliance with climate community“s
standards, data consistency and metadata. Doing quality control is crucial in the data
publication process and data re-use. We use the QA-DKRZ methodology combined
with an additional in-house quality control that checks values of adjusted and
standardized variables data.
QA-DKRZ
During the Quality Assurance process of the DKRZ, the following criteria are checked:
1. Number of data sets is correct and > 0
2. Size of every data set is > 0
3. The data sets and corresponding metadata are accessible
4. The data sizes are controlled and correct
5. The spatial-temporal coverage description ”metadata) is consistent to the data,
time steps are correct and the time coordinate is continuous
6. The format is correct
7. Variable description and data are consistent
In-House
In addition, an In-house quality control is built upon CDO and NCO tools and consists
twofold in:
Analyzing the difference between adjusted model and observation values on
the reference period
Analyzing the time evolution difference between adjusted and non-adjusted
model.
Difference between adjusted model and observations
First, we estimate two quantities:
average for the months of the year on the reference period for observations
average for the months of the year on the reference period for adjusted model
Then, we estimate the difference between these two quantities and get 12 files in
output ”one per month). For each month ”i.e., for each file), we take the 10th and 90th
quantile which gives 12 values for each quantile.
Finally, we control that these 12 values are comprised in the following ranges:
temperature between [ -1 ; 1 ] in K
precipitation between [-0.5 ; 0.5] in mm.day-1
solar radiation between [-5 ; 5] in W.m-2
surface wind between [-0.5 ; 0.5] in m.s-1
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 13
If values are outside the range, the script raises an error with a 1 status.
Difference between adjusted model and non-adjusted model
First, we estimate four quantities:
Average for the seasons on the reference period for the non-adjusted model
Average for the seasons on the reference period for the adjusted model
Average for the seasons on the future period ”2071-2100) for the non-adjusted
model
Average for the seasons on the future period ”2071-2100) for the adjusted
model
Then, we compute the evolution between future and reference periods for the
non-adjusted and adjusted model. We estimate the difference between them and get
4 files in output ”one per season). For each season ”i.e., for each file), we take the 10th
and 90th quantile of the difference which gives 4 values for each quantile.
Finally, we control these 4 values are comprised in the following range:
temperature between [-2 ; 2] in K
precipitation between [-1 ; 1]in mm.day-1
solar radiation between [-10 ; 10] in W.m-2
surface wind between [-1 ; 1] in m.s-1
If values are outside the range, the quality control raises an error with a 1 status.
3.2.7. Spatial Extraction
Raw ESGF files are available as global ”CMIP5) or continental ”CORDEX) domains ”Asia,
Europe, etc.), so we extract country-level and city-level information to help users
focusing on their area of interest.
Country-level
Country-level extraction method consists in identifying the border grid points for a
country and drawing a rectangle around them. The drawback is that neighboring
country points can be included in this rectangle. In the next version, well create a
mask per country to only consider country points.
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 14
City-level
Model grid points are spaced approximately every 100 km to 50 km for CMIP5 models
and 15 to 10 km for CORDEX models. To extract city-level information, we consider the
nearest grid point for a city ”we only consider continental points). City level data
correspond to a single grid point. They give a trend but do not account for local
phenomena like the urban heat island effect that modulates small scale changes and
requires higher resolution ”typically 100m) and specific modeling to be resolved.
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 15
4. Considerations and Recommended Use
4.1. Recommended Use
The data sets on the climate data factory are meant to support users involved in
climate change adaptation topics, of which impact researchers, adaptation
practitioners, urban planners or energy sector. Data are intended for use in scientific
research and impact studies from local to global scales. Extensive metadata
information are provided in netCDF files.
4.2. Assumptions and Limitations
Bias-adjustment consists in calibrating model simulations to ensure their statistical
properties are similar to those of the corresponding observed values ”as from
climat4impact.eu). Some authors claim that bias-adjustment techniques introduce
another level of uncertainty making evaluation of projections uncertainty even harder
”e.g., Ehret et al. 2012, Maraun et al., 2016). There are still differences of opinion
regarding whether direct or bias-adjusted climate model simulations should be used
in impact modeling and assessment. On the one hand, the use of direct climate model
simulations ensures spatial and temporal consistency across variables, on the other
hand the substantial biases of raw variables renders direct climate model simulations
unrealistic and ultimately unsuitable for climate change impact modeling. While the
climate modeling community continues to improve climate models, statistical bias
adjustment is currently necessary to make climate projections fit for purpose in
impact modeling and assessment ”Ficklin et al 2016, climate4impact.eu).
As described in Section 3.2.4, The CDF-t bias-adjustment method preserves long-term
trend in climate models data. CDF-t performances are not sensitive to the climate
model performance but to the variability and trend of its driving large-scale fields
”reanalysis or GCMs/RCMs control runs) which can perform better or worse depending
on the variable but also on the season ”Vrac et al., 2012). However, to represent a
correct CDF under historical and/or present climate conditions does not guarantee to
correctly represent the evolution of the CDF in a climate change context. In addition,
CDF-t method is a univariate adjustment method which is applied location by location,
and is not designed to reproduce multi-dimensional properties ”e.g., variable
covariance and spatial correlations). Development of a multivariate and spatial
version of the CDF-t method is underway ”Vrac 2018). The aforementioned limitations
are not specific to the CDF-t method but common to any univariate Quantile-Quantile
method.
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 16
5. References
Climate Data Operators, Max Planck Institute, 2016.
https://code.zmaw.de/projects/cdo
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Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 19
 
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 20
6. Dataset and Document Revision History
Rev 0 - 1 February 2018 - Document created.
 
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 21
7. Annex
Table 1. CMIP5 experiment Global Circulation Models (GCM) for surface temperature
variable per RCP scenario (RCP4.5, RCP8.5) available on the climate data factory
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 22
GCM
RCM
RCP4.5
RCP8.5
CNRM-CM5
CLMcom-CCLM4-8-17
x
x
CNRM-CM5
SMHI-RCA4
x
EC-EARTH
CLMcom-CCLM4-8-17
x
x
EC-EARTH
DMI-HIRHAM5
x
x
EC-EARTH
KNMI-RACMO22E
x
x
EC-EARTH
SMHI-RCA4
x
x
HadGEM2-ES
CLMcom-CCLM4-8-17
x
HadGEM2-ES
KNMI-RACMO22E
x
HadGEM2-ES
SMHI-RCA4
x
IPSL-CM5A-MR
SMHI-RCA4
x
MPI-ESM-LR
CLMcom-CCLM4-8-17
x
x
MPI-ESM-LR
SMHI-RCA4
x
Table 2. CORDEX experiment Regional Climate Models (RCM) and their forcing GCM for
surface temperature variable, per RCP scenario (RCP4.5, RCP8.5) available on the climate
data factory
Technical Report: Bias Adjusting Climate Model Projections | 23
Cover photo:
Mountains and Clouds
by rachel_thecat / CC BY-SA 2.0
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