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- 2019
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)
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2. |
- Collier, Emily, et al.
(author)
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The first ensemble of kilometer-scale simulations of a hydrological year over the third pole
- 2024
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In: Climate Dynamics. - 0930-7575 .- 1432-0894.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- An accurate understanding of the current and future water cycle over the Third Pole is of great societal importance, given the role this region plays as a water tower for densely populated areas downstream. An emerging and promising approach for skillful climate assessments over regions of complex terrain is kilometer-scale climate modeling. As a foundational step towards such simulations over the Third Pole, we present a multi-model and multi-physics ensemble of kilometer-scale regional simulations for the hydrological year of October 2019 to September 2020. The ensemble consists of 13 simulations performed by an international consortium of 10 research groups, configured with a horizontal grid spacing ranging from 2.2 to 4km covering all of the Third Pole region. These simulations are driven by ERA5 and are part of a Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling EXperiment Flagship Pilot Study on Convection-Permitting Third Pole. The simulations are compared against available gridded and in-situ observations and remote-sensing data, to assess the performance and spread of the model ensemble compared to the driving reanalysis during the cold and warm seasons. Although ensemble evaluation is hindered by large differences between the gridded precipitation datasets used as a reference over this region, we show that the ensemble improves on many warm-season precipitation metrics compared with ERA5, including most wet-day and hour statistics, and also adds value in the representation of wet spells in both seasons. As such, the ensemble will provide an invaluable resource for future improvements in the process understanding of the hydroclimate of this remote but important region.
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3. |
- Kristan, Matej, et al.
(author)
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The Visual Object Tracking VOT2015 challenge results
- 2015
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In: Proceedings 2015 IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision Workshops ICCVW 2015. - : IEEE. - 9780769557205 ; , s. 564-586
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Visual Object Tracking challenge 2015, VOT2015, aims at comparing short-term single-object visual trackers that do not apply pre-learned models of object appearance. Results of 62 trackers are presented. The number of tested trackers makes VOT 2015 the largest benchmark on short-term tracking to date. For each participating tracker, a short description is provided in the appendix. Features of the VOT2015 challenge that go beyond its VOT2014 predecessor are: (i) a new VOT2015 dataset twice as large as in VOT2014 with full annotation of targets by rotated bounding boxes and per-frame attribute, (ii) extensions of the VOT2014 evaluation methodology by introduction of a new performance measure. The dataset, the evaluation kit as well as the results are publicly available at the challenge website(1).
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- Ma, Mengnan, et al.
(author)
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Contribution of Recycled and External Advected Moisture to Precipitation and Its Inter-Annual Variation Over the Tibetan Plateau
- 2024
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In: Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. - 2169-897X .- 2169-8996. ; 129
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this study, we performed a high-resolution simulation using the Weather Research and Forecasting model, integrated with water vapor tracers, covering the years 2005–2019. Our objective was to obtain deeper insights into the spatiotemporal dynamics of external advected and local evaporative water vapor, and to elucidate their impact on precipitation patterns across the Tibetan Plateau (TP). Our findings underscore that a significant proportion of TP's precipitation originates from external advected water vapor, primarily entering through the western and southern boundaries. During summer, stronger zonal and meridional water vapor transport, driven by prevailing westerly winds and the Asian monsoon, significantly influences seasonal and spatial precipitation variations. Additionally, we observed that the inter-annual variation of precipitation is intricately linked to changes in the net water vapor influx, modulated by alterations in atmospheric circulation. We also analyze the Precipitation Recycling Ratio (PRR) which refers to the proportion of precipitation originated from local evaporative water vapor to the total precipitation, revealing distinctive elevation-dependent variations aligned with grassland distribution. Notably, PRR exhibits asynchronous shifts with precipitation at different timescales, potentially linked to soil moisture-precipitation feedback at intra-annual scales. Moreover, the investigation highlights that inter-annual variations in PRR are primarily linked to the inflow and outflow of water vapor as well as wind strength at 500hPa, particularly prominent during colder seasons, while thermal factors carry comparable weight to dynamical factors in warmer seasons.
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5. |
- Ma, Mengnan, et al.
(author)
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High-resolution climate projection over the Tibetan Plateau using WRF forced by bias-corrected CESM
- 2023
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In: Atmospheric Research. - : Elsevier BV. - 0169-8095. ; 286
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Tibetan Plateau (TP) has undergone significant climate warming with a stronger amplitude than that experienced elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere during the past years, but it is still challenging for most regional climate models to realistically simulate the present-day climate and promisingly project the future climate over the TP. In this study, high-resolution simulation using the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) driven by bias-corrected CESM is conducted from 1979 to 2100, with the period from 2006 to 2100 under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 (Representative Concentration Pathways) scenarios. The simulated present-day climate is evaluated firstly and then the future climate is studied secondly. The results show that compared with station observation, WRF successfully captures the spatial pattern of annual mean surface air temperature (T2m) and precipitation over the TP, with the spatial correlation coefficients larger than 0.95 for T2m and larger than 0.70 for precipitation. However, great underestimation of T2m over the southeastern TP is found in the cold season which is related to the underestimation of snow there, and the snow-temperature positive feedback develops. WRF shows limited ability in reducing the dry bias in summer, which is related to the simulated weaker water vapor transport over the southern and eastern TP. For the future changes, substantial warming, general increase in precipitation and decrease in snow are projected under RCP8.5. The warming magnitude is greater over the western TP where the more significant decrease of snow will occur by the end of 21st century. Projected precipitation tends to consistently decrease over the western TP and along the south flank of TP which is related to the low-level circulation change. The occurring frequency of light precipitation will decrease while that of non-precipitation and extreme precipitation will increase especially in the far future, with the more obvious change occurring under RCP8.5. Overall, WRF shows high ability in simulating the present-day climate and thus reliable performance in future climate projection.
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6. |
- Ma, Mengnan, et al.
(author)
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Subdaily Extreme Precipitation and Its Linkage to Global Warming Over the Tibetan Plateau
- 2023
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In: Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. - 2169-897X .- 2169-8996. ; 128:18
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The spatiotemporal characteristics of subdaily extreme precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) have undergone significant changes due to global warming. In this study, we employed the high-resolution Weather Research and Forecasting regional climate model to conduct a series of historical and projection simulations under representative concentration pathways (RCPs), especially RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. The aim was to investigate the past and future climatologies and spatiotemporal evolution of subdaily precipitation extremes using newly proposed subdaily extreme precipitation indices (EPIs). The results show that projected changes in precipitation amount, particularly during wet hours, exhibit spatial disparaties. Notably, there are significant decreases along the southern border of the TP and over the western TP, while obvious increases are observed over the inner TP. The southeastern TP, western TP, and southern border of the TP are expected to experience less frequent, shorter duration, and more intense precipitation on an hourly basis. The TP, as a whole, has demonstrated significantly increasing trends in moderate-to-heavy precipitation frequencies, along with consistent decreasing trends in precipitation events with short, medium, and long durations. Furthermore, it is predicted that the relationship between extreme precipitation and temperature will deviate from the Clausius-Clapeyron (C-C) relationship toward the double C-C relationship in the far-future under RCP8.5, particularly over the southeastern TP. Additionally, there are robust correlations between the intensity-related EPIs and elevation. This indicates that, at the local scale, the complex topography of the region may play a crucial role in shaping the nonuniform distribution of precipitation extremes by modulating associated upward motion.
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7. |
- Ma, Mengnan, et al.
(author)
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Summer regional climate simulations over Tibetan Plateau: from gray zone to convection permitting scale
- 2022
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In: Climate Dynamics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0930-7575 .- 1432-0894.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is often referred to as ‘the Third Pole’ and plays an essential role in the global climate. However, it remains challenging for most global and regional models to realistically simulate the characteristics of climate over the TP. In this study, two Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) experiments using spectral nudging with gray-zone (GZ9) and convection-permitting (CP3) resolution are conducted for summers from 2009 to 2018. The surface air temperature (T2m) and precipitation from the two simulations and the global reanalysis ERA5 are evaluated against in-situ observations. The results show that ERA5 has a general cold bias over southern TP, especially in maximum T2m (Tmax), and wet bias over whole TP. Both experiments can successfully capture the spatial pattern and daily variation of T2m and precipitation, though cold bias for temperature and dry bias for precipitation exist especially over the regions south of 35° N. Compared with ERA5, the added value of the two WRF experiments is mainly reflected in the reduced cold bias especially for Tmax with more improvement found in CP3 and the reduced wet bias. However, the ability of the convection-permitting WRF experiment in improving the simulation of precipitation seems limited when compared to the gray-zone WRF experiment, which may be related to the biases in physical parameterization and lack of representativeness of station observation. Further investigation into surface radiation budget reveals that the underestimation of net shortwave radiation contributes a lot to the cold bias of T2m over the southeastern TP in GZ9 which is improved in CP3. Compared with GZ9, CP3 shows that larger specific humidity at low-level (mid-high level) coexists with more precipitation (clouds) over the southern TP. This improvement is achieved by better depiction of topographic details, underlying surface and atmospheric processes, land–atmosphere interactions and so on, leading to stronger northward water vapor transport (WVT) in CP3, providing more water vapor for precipitation at surface and much wetter condition in the mid-high level.
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8. |
- Niu, Xiaorui, et al.
(author)
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On the sensitivity of seasonal and diurnal precipitation to cumulus parameterization over CORDEX-EA-II
- 2020
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In: Climate Dynamics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0930-7575 .- 1432-0894. ; 54, s. 373-393
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The ability of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model in simulating the seasonal and diurnal cycles of rainfall over the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment East Asia Phase II (CORDEX-EA-II) domain is validated against the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) datasets. A focus is placed on the role of convective parameterization (CP) schemes. A set of numerical experiments at a 25km resolution for 1998–2009, using six different CPs, is performed to evaluate the physics-dependency of simulation results. All CPs simulate realistic summer mean precipitation and its northward propagation, with the best performance in the Simplified Arakawa-Schubert (SAS). The biases in the seasonal evolution of rainfall are related to the deficiency in simulated low-level winds and the northward propagation of the cyclonic vorticity. The simulated earlier peak time in other CPs is delayed by about 1–2h by the Kain-Fritsch with a modified trigger function (KFMT), although this scheme shows a disadvantage in the magnitude. The performance of different CPs in simulating diurnal rainfall cycles is dependent on regions, and none of them performs better than the others for all the sub-regions. The initiation of simulated convection is weakly physics-dependent. However, the timing and magnitude of stratiform precipitation differ among the six experiments. A furtheranalysisshows that the dry biases over the lower Yangtze River basin are a result of the weakened southwesterly water vapor transport, while the excessive afternoon rainfall in the Kain-Fritsch (KF) simulation is attributed to the largest positive perturbation in the lower level atmosphere, especially the enhanced vertical transport of humidity.
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9. |
- Ou, Tinghai, et al.
(author)
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Wet bias of summer precipitation in the northwestern Tibetan Plateau in ERA5 is linked to overestimated lower-level southerly wind over the plateau
- 2023
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In: Climate Dynamics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0930-7575 .- 1432-0894. ; 61:5-6, s. 2139-53
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Tibetan Plateau (TP), also called the Third Pole, is considered to be “the world water tower”. The northwestern TP (NWTP), which has an average elevation higher than 4800m, is an arid region where the summer precipitation is largely overestimated by the ERA5 global reanalysis product. We hypothesize that this wet bias is mainly caused by unrealistic lower-level winds that trigger strong convection over the region; it can be reduced by using a high-resolution regional climate model with a large domain that allows realistically representing interactions between the Westerlies and Asian summer monsoons. Here, downscaling using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model driven by ERA5 was conducted with a large domain (8°‒50° N, 65°‒125° E) at 9km for the period 1979‒2019 (WRF9km). Precipitation values from WRF9km and ERA5 were evaluated against satellite observations; compared with ERA5, WRF9km captured the climatological summer precipitation over the NWTP with a much-reduced wet bias. The ERA5 overestimation is mainly caused by excessive convective precipitation, likely linked to strong vertical motions over the NWTP induced by an overestimated lower-level southerly wind.
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10. |
- Prein, Andreas F., et al.
(author)
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Towards Ensemble-Based Kilometer-Scale Climate Simulations over the Third Pole Region
- 2022
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In: Climate Dynamics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0930-7575 .- 1432-0894.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding mountains have an average elevation of 4,400m and a glaciated area of ∼ 100,000km 2 giving it the name “Third Pole (TP) region”. The TP is the headwater of many major rivers in Asia that provide fresh water to hundreds of millions of people. Climate change is altering the energy and water cycle of the TP at a record pace but the future of this region is highly uncertain due to major challenges in simulating weather and climate processes in this complex area. The Convection-Permitting Third Pole (CPTP) project is a Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) Flagship Pilot Study (FPS) that aims to revolutionize our understanding of climate change impacts on the TP through ensemble-based, kilometer-scale climate modeling. Here we present the experimental design and first results from multi-model, multi-physics ensemble simulations of three case studies. The five participating modeling systems show high performance across a range of meteorological situations and are close to having ”observational quality” in simulating precipitation and near-surface temperature. This is partly due to the large differences between observational datasets in this region, which are the leading source of uncertainty in model evaluations. However, a systematic cold bias above 2000m exists in most modeling systems. Model physics sensitivity tests performed with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model show that planetary boundary layer (PBL) physics and microphysics contribute equally to model uncertainties. Additionally, larger domains result in better model performance. We conclude by describing high-priority research needs and the next steps in the CPTP project.
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