On the seasonal prediction of surface climate over Vietnam using Regional Climate Model RegCM3 Phan Van Tan, Nguyen Quang Trung, Ngo Duc Thanh, Le Nhu Quan Hanoi University of Science,
Trang 1On the seasonal prediction of surface climate over Vietnam
using Regional Climate Model (RegCM3)
Phan Van Tan, Nguyen Quang Trung, Ngo Duc Thanh, Le Nhu Quan
Hanoi University of Science, VNU Hanoi
Abstract
In this study the Regional Climate Model version 3.0 (RegCM3) has been employed to simulate climate conditions over Vietnam and adjacent areas during the summer monsoon period, from 00UTC April 01 to 00UTC November 01 with the first one month is used for spin-up time The main purpose of the study is to assess the performance of RegCM3 in seasonal forecasting for Vietnam The model, driven by the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis has been run for the period 1996–2005
west-east and south-north directions, respectively, and has 36-km horizontal resolution for both directions Over the ocean, RegCM3 is forced by the Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) data, which is available on a 1.0 × 1.0° grid mesh and provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, USA)
The simulated mean sea level pressure, geopotential height and wind field over the interested domain are compared to the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data Monthly mean surface air temperature and precipitation from 58 meteorological stations over Vietnam are also used
to validate the RegCM3’s results
1 Introduction
Prediction of weather fluctuations on seasonal timescales, so-called seasonal prediction,
is of great scientific and societal interest, and is very important for product planning as well as for disaster prevention Unlike short-range weather forecast which focuses on daily or hourly fluctuations, seasonal prediction interests in time-averaged values (Wang Shaowu et al., 2001) Basic products of seasonal prediction are often monthly mean or seasonal mean of temperature and precipitation
According to Stockdale (2000), seasonal prediction can arise in two distinct ways: empirical and dynamical approaches In the empirical approach, predictive models are derived based on the relationships between predictants (eg surface climate elements) and predictors (eg atmospheric variables, sea surface temperature (SST), soil moisture, etc) using historical observed or model-based datasets In this case, the physical basis knowledge of seasonal predictability is critically important for making practical forecasts Up to present, the empirical approach has been used worldwide for predicting tropical cyclone activities, seasonal mean temperature, precipitation, etc (Annamalai et al., 2005; Duffy et al., 2006; Kloizbach et al., 2003; Krishnamurti et al., 2001)
mathematical models of the climate system, which are extensions of numerical weather prediction models These models can predict evolutions of the climate system for several
a simple model for predicting El Nino variability in which initial conditions were created by using the observed wind field over the Pacific (Cane et al.,1986) To date, there are a wide variety of such models have been developed, including Global Climate Models (GCMs) (eg
Trang 2Located in the eastern part of the Indochina Peninsula, Vietnam is a region with complex topography, land surface conditions, coastlines, and with a climate largely influenced by mesoscale phenomena During the summer months (May to October), almost all areas of the country have experienced high-temperature conditions except the high mountain areas Under the influence of South Asian monsoon, tropical perturbations, such as Inter-tropical Conversion Zone (ITCZ), typhoon activities, etc, and their interactions with topography, in the Northern and Southern Vietnam the rainy season also coincides with this period with rainfall amount from May to October contributes about 80% to the annual total rainfall, while Central Vietnam experiences dry and hot conditions due to the “foehn” phenomena
In this study the Regional Climate Model version 3.0 (RegCM3) has been employed to simulate the climate conditions over Vietnam and adjacent areas during the summer monsoon period The main purpose is to examine and evaluate the RegCM3 seasonal predictability of circulation features and the two basic surface climate fields of monthly 2m-temperature and precipitation
2 Experiment design
As a first step towards the assessment of the RegCM3 performance in seasonal forecasting for Vietnam, numerical simulations for the summer monsoon period during
1996-2005 driven driven by the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis (Kalnay et al., 1996) are carried out
RegCM3 is a primitive equation, hydrostatic, compressible, limited-area model with a sigma (σ) vertical coordinate, which was originally developed by Giorgi et al (1993a, b) and then has undergone a number of improvements described in Giorgi et al (1999), Pal et al (2000) The dynamical core of RegCM3 is equivalent to the hydrostatic version of the Mesoscale Model version 5 (MM5) Surface processes are represented by the Biosphere–Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (BATS) and boundary layer physics are formulated following a nonlocal vertical diffusion scheme (Giorgi et al., 1993a) Radiative transfer is computed using the radiation package of the Community Climate Model version 3 (CCM3) (Giorgi et al., 1999)
Three integrations using three convective schemes (1) Kuo (Anthes, 1977), (2) MIT– Emanuel (Emanuel, 1991: Emanuel and Zivkovic-Rothman, 1999), and (3) Grell (Grell, 1993) using the Arakawa-Schubert closure assumption (Arakawa and Schubert, 1974) are carried out, and named as Reg-Kuo, Reg-Emanuel, and Reg-Grell, respectively
The model runs with 18 vertical σ-levels, in which 6 levels are under 850 mb in the planetary boundary layer The top layer is at 50 mb The model domain centered at 11.5oN and 108.0oE with 145 and 105 grid-points in west-east and south-north directions, respectively, and with a horizontal resolution of 36 km for both directions In this study the normal Mercator conformal projection is used For each year of the 1996-2005 period, the model is integrated from 00UTC April 01 to 00UTC November 01 with the first one month (i.e April) is used for spin-up time Lateral boundary conditions are updated every 6 hours Over the ocean, the model is forced by the Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) data, which is available on a 1.0° × 1.0° grid mesh and provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
For evaluating the quality of the simulations, model’s outputs are compared to various datasets The simulated circulations over the interested domain are compared to the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data Precipitation and 2m air temperature are validated against the
resolution (New et al 1999, New et al 2000) Moreover, monthly mean temperature and monthly accumulative precipitation are compared to observations obtained from 58 meteorological stations over Vietnam
Trang 33 Results
3.1 Impact of different convective schemes
As mentioned above, in order to study the sensitivity of RegCM3 to convective schemes, three experiments Reg-Kuo, Reg-Emanuel, and Reg-Grell were carried out Firstly,
we estimate the impact of these schemes to simulated mean sea level pressure (MSLP) and geopotential height (GH) fields
Figure 1 Mean sea-level pressure (1996-2005) for May (top panel), July (middle panel) and
October (bottom) of the Initial and Lateral Boundary Conditions (ICBC) compared to
Reg-Kuo, Reg-Emanuel and Reg-Grell
Figure 1 shows MSLP averaged over the 1996-2005 period for May, July and October
of the Initial and Lateral Boundary Conditions (ICBC) in comparison with the outputs of Reg-Kuo, Reg-Emanuel and Reg-Grell Although MSLP charts are not really good for estimating wind direction and strength in the tropics, there are noticeable differences in this case All the three experiments enhance the MSLP of about 4mb compared to ICBC in May and in October Figure 1 also shows a MSLP decrease on the edge of the low pressure system in July, significantly with the MIT-Emanuel convective scheme
Mean GH at 850 mb for May, July and October is represented in Figure 2 Figures 3 and Figure 4 are the same as Figure 2, but for 500 and 200 mb, respectively GH and wind field structures at higher altitude are less complicated than at the surface due to less terrain influences The expriments are in more agreement with each other when the height increases
At 850 mb, Grell’s results for July and October have large difference with ICBC Reg-Emmanuel and Reg-Kuo amplify the GH magnitude of about 5m while still well represent
Trang 4among the simulations are minor and insignificant Reg-Emmanuel is again the most comparable integration to ICBC, especially for its wind field
Figure 2 Mean 850-mb geopotential height (1996-2005) for May (top panel), July (middle
panel) and October (bottom panel) of ICBC compared to Kuo, Emanuel and
Reg-Grell The simulated wind vectors are superimposed (m/s)
Trang 5ICBC Reg-Kuo Reg-Emanuel Reg-Grell
Figure 3 As Figure 2, but for 500mb
Figure 4 As Figure 2, but for 200mb
Trang 63.2 Validation of temperature and precipitation
Simulated monthly mean temperature and precipitation are interpolated to station locations with longitude and latitude, respectively
0
5
10
15
20
25
35
Station
T av e ( o C)
AnthesKuo Emanuel Grell OBS
Figure 5 Monthly mean temperature from May to October during the 1996-2005 period at
the 58 stations
The simulated and observed monthly mean temperature are represented in Figure 5 Temperature is generally underestimated by the model The differences between the three
the stations in the North-West region (eg Lai Chau, Dien Bien) and in the Western Highlands (eg Kontum, Pleiku) A particular case is the Sapa station where temperature is overestimated This is apparently demonstrated in Figure 6 with negative mean errors at almost all stations except Sapa
-12-9
-30
6
Station
ME
Figure 6 Mean error of monthly mean temperature from May to October during the
1996-2005 period at the 58 stations
Correlation coefficients of monthly mean temperature between observed and simulated data are relatively high, from 0.3 to 0.7 Low correlation stations are the ones in the coastal or island regions (eg CoTo, BachLongVi) or those in the Southern part of Viet Nam (eg Vung Tau, Can Tho) The Northern stations have considerably higher coefficients compared to other regions
-0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
Station
Cor.Coef
Figure 7 Correlation coefficients between observed and simulated temperature from May to
October during 1996-2005 at the 58 stations
Trang 7100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
Station
Figure 8 As Fig 5, but for precipitation
Figure 8 shows significant differences among the numerical integrations for precipitation Reg-Emanuel gives the closest result to the observed data while Reg-Kuo and Reg-Gre similarly underestimate precipiation In the stations which have high annual rainfall amount, such as BacQuang, the simulation results are far from the observation Figure 9 presents the negative mean errors of precipitation estimated by Kuo, Grell, and Reg-Emanuel Low correlation coefficients for precipitation are obtained between observation and simulations, with the highest value is about 0.3 in Central Vietnam (Figure 9)
-25
-15
-50
10
Station
ME
Figure 9 As Fig 6, but for precipitation
-0.2
0
0.2
0.4
Station
Figure 10 As Fig 7, but for precipitation
4 Conclusions
The RegCM3 model was used to simulate climate over Vietnam and the adjacent areas during the summer monsoon period To test the sensitivity of RegCM3 to different convective schemes, three experiments, namely Reg-Kuo, Reg-Emanuel, and Reg-Grell were carried out
It is shown that the three experiments increase MSLP over the model domain The simulations
Trang 8insignificant When comparing to observations at the 58 meteorological stations of Vietnam,
it is shown that RegCM3 systematically underestimates 2m-air temperature but the correlation coefficients are relatively high Significant differences exist for precipitation simulated by the three experiments Once again, Reg-Emanuel better represents the observation than Reg-Kuo and Reg-Grell
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