VALIDATION OF THE MAIN GEOPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY REGIONAL CLIMATE MODEL

I. M. Shkolnik, V. P. Meleshko, and V. M. Gavrilina

Present-day regional climate simulation over Russia has been validated using the regional climate model of the Main Geophysical Observatory with a 50-km horizontal resolution. Two six-year experiments have been carried out, each with two different types of lateral boundary conditions derived from NCEP/NCAR reanalysis and MGO T42L14 global climate model for the same time period from 1982 to 1987. It is shown that the skill of the regional climate model to reproduce sea-level pressure, surface temperature, and precipitation distributions depends on the errors in the large-scale circulations produced by the global model. As compared against the regional climate model driven by GCM, the regional model driven by reanalysis produces seasonalities of surface air temperature and precipitation closer to that observed over large terrestrial watersheds of eastern Europe. The regional model tends to underestimate the observed runoff in the watersheds. The interannual and intra-annual variations of monthly mean temperature and precipitation in the model agree with observations.