Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

Synoptically forced hydroclimatology of major Arctic watersheds in general circulation models, Part 1: the Mackenzie River basin

Finnis, J., J.J. Cassano, M.M. Holland, and M.C. Serreze

2009, International Journal of Climatology, 29, 1226-1243

The ability of fourteen general circulation models (GCMs) to realistically simulate weather patterns and precipitation regimes affecting the Mackenzie River Basin has been assessed. Applying the method of self-organizing maps to daily data from the model ensemble and the ERA-40 reanalysis, a regional synoptic climatology of sea level pressure was developed and used to analyze model output. GCM performance, as compared against ERA-40, varies significantly between models and seasons, but is generally best during the summer and winter. In-depth examination of a five model sub-set reveals biases in the placement of the Pacific storm track, which may be related to misrepresentations of the Beaufort High. Biases in Mackenzie basin precipitation are only weakly connected to these circulation errors, and are instead the result of inaccurate representation of basin-scale precipitation regimes. In particular, models allow excessive orographic precipitation along the west coast of North America to intrude into the Mackenzie basin. These results suggest that projections of the Mackenzies response to climate change could benefit from climate downscaling studies.