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Fronts and precipitation in CMIP5 models for the austral winter of the Southern Hemisphere

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Abstract

Wintertime fronts climatology and the relationship between fronts and precipitation as depicted by a group of CMIP5 models are evaluated over the Southern Hemisphere (SH). The frontal activity is represented by an index that takes into account the vorticity, the gradient of temperature and the specific humidity at the 850 hPa level. ERA-Interim reanalysis and GPCP datasets are used to assess the performance of the models in the present climate. Overall, it is found that the models can reproduce adequately the main features of frontal activity and front frequency over the SH. The total precipitation is overestimated in most of the models, especially the maximum values over the mid latitudes. This overestimation could be related to the high values of precipitation frequency that are identified in some of the models evaluated. The relationship between fronts and precipitation has also been evaluated in terms of both frequency of frontal precipitation and percentage of precipitation due to fronts. In general terms, the models overestimate the proportion between frontal and total precipitation. In contrast with frequency of total precipitation, the frequency of frontal precipitation is well reproduced by the models, with the higher values located at the mid latitudes. The results suggest that models represent very well the dynamic forcing (fronts) and the frequency of frontal precipitation, though the amount of precipitation due to fronts is overestimated.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups (listed in Table 1 of this paper) for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP the US Department of Energy’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals. This work was supported by the following grants: FONCyT-PICT-2012-1972, FONCyT-PICT-2014-2730 and UBACYT2014 No. 20020130200233BA. We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers whose comments allowed substantial improvements to the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA-CONICET/FCEN-UBA), CONICET-Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Universitaria Pabellón II Piso 2, C1428EGA, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Josefina Blázquez & Silvina A. Solman

  2. Instituto Franco-Argentino para el Estudio del Clima y sus Impactos UMI IFAECI/CNRS-CONICET-UBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Josefina Blázquez & Silvina A. Solman

  3. Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísicas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata. (FCAG/UNLP), La Plata, Argentina

    Josefina Blázquez

  4. Departamento de Ciencias de la Atmósfera y los Océanos DCAO-FCEN-UBA, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Silvina A. Solman

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  1. Josefina Blázquez
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  2. Silvina A. Solman
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Correspondence to Josefina Blázquez.

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Blázquez, J., Solman, S.A. Fronts and precipitation in CMIP5 models for the austral winter of the Southern Hemisphere. Clim Dyn 50, 2705–2717 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-3765-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-3765-z

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