Understanding the Biases in Daily Extreme Precipitation Climatology in CMIP6 Models

Abstract Future projections in extreme precipitation depend heavily on climate models. Therefore, assessing their fidelity in reproducing the extreme rainfall characteristics in historical simulation is critical. We evaluated CMIP6 models' performance in reproducing the climatology of daily extremes, focusing on the global land monsoon (GLM) domain that feeds two‐thirds of the world's population. Compared with ERA5, models demonstrate a significant wet bias in GLM domain for the annual maximum daily precipitation (14.14%) and the extreme tail of daily precipitation distributions (32.53%), more than twice the global average. Decomposition of biases reveals that dynamic processes, particularly vertical velocity, primarily drive these biases. Using the quasi‐geostrophic equation, we determined that the component associated with large‐scale adiabatic disturbances () mainly drives vertical velocity biases, with diabatic heating term amplifying them. Furthermore, a significant correlation between biases and baroclinicity biases in midlatitude suggests that baroclinicity biases are a key contributor to the vertical velocity biases.

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Publication Details

Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
Published
2025-06-17
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1029/2024gl114507
Primary Topic
Climate variability and models
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Understanding the Biases in Daily Extreme Precipitation Climatology in CMIP6 Models

Zhongshi Zhang, Bo Liu, Cristian Martínez-Villalobos, Bin Wang et al.
Geophysical Research Letters
Climate variability and models
article

Understanding the Biases in Daily Extreme Precipitation Climatology in CMIP6 Models

Zhongshi Zhang, Bo Liu, Cristian Martínez-Villalobos, Bin Wang, Jiaqi Chen
article en

Abstract

Abstract Future projections in extreme precipitation depend heavily on climate models. Therefore, assessing their fidelity in reproducing the extreme rainfall characteristics in historical simulation is critical. We evaluated CMIP6 models' performance in reproducing the climatology of daily extremes, focusing on the global land monsoon (GLM) domain that feeds two‐thirds of the world's population. Compared with ERA5, models demonstrate a significant wet bias in GLM domain for the annual maximum daily precipitation (14.14%) and the extreme tail of daily precipitation distributions (32.53%), more than twice the global average. Decomposition of biases reveals that dynamic processes, particularly vertical velocity, primarily drive these biases. Using the quasi‐geostrophic equation, we determined that the component associated with large‐scale adiabatic disturbances () mainly drives vertical velocity biases, with diabatic heating term amplifying them. Furthermore, a significant correlation between biases and baroclinicity biases in midlatitude suggests that baroclinicity biases are a key contributor to the vertical velocity biases.

Geophysical Research LettersVol. 52(12)
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (US), Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (CN), Peking University (CN), Adolfo Ibáñez University (CL), Chengdu University of Information Technology (CN), China University of Geosciences (CN), Data Observatory Foundation
National Natural Science Foundation of China, Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo, EarthLab, University of Washington
Openalex Percentile: Top 86%
Climate variability and models
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