EGU22-5900
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-5900
EGU General Assembly 2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Understanding extreme events with multi-thousand member high-resolution global atmospheric simulations

Peter Watson1, Sarah Sparrow2, William Ingram3, Simon Wilson4, Giuseppe Zappa5, Emanuele Bevacqua6, Nicholas Leach7, David Sexton3, Richard Jones3, Marie Drouard7, Daniel Mitchell1, David Wallom2, Tim Woollings7, and Myles Allen7,8
Peter Watson et al.
  • 1School of Geographical Sciences, Bristol University, Bristol, UK
  • 2Oxford e-Research Centre, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
  • 3Met Office, Exeter, UK
  • 4National Centre for Atmospheric Science, UK
  • 5Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Bologna, Italy
  • 6Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research—UFZ, Leipzig, Germany
  • 7Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
  • 8Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University, Oxford, UK

Multi-thousand member climate model simulations are highly valuable for showing characteristics of extreme weather events in historical and future climates. However, until now, studies using such a physically-based approach have been limited to using models with a resolution much coarser than the most modern systems. We have developed a global atmospheric model with ~60km resolution that can be run in the climateprediction.net distributed computing system to produce such large datasets. This resolution is finer than that of many current global climate models and sufficient for good simulation of extratropical synoptic features such as storms. It also allows many extratropical extreme weather events to be simulated without requiring regional downscaling. We will show that this model's simulation of extratropical winter weather is competitive with that in other state-of-the-art models. We will also present the first results generated by this system. One application has been the production of ~2000 member simulations based on sea surface temperatures in severe future winters produced in the UK Climate Projections 2018 dataset, generating large numbers of examples of plausible extreme wet and warm UK seasons. Another is showing the increasing spatial extent of precipitation extremes in the Northern Hemisphere extratropics. 

How to cite: Watson, P., Sparrow, S., Ingram, W., Wilson, S., Zappa, G., Bevacqua, E., Leach, N., Sexton, D., Jones, R., Drouard, M., Mitchell, D., Wallom, D., Woollings, T., and Allen, M.: Understanding extreme events with multi-thousand member high-resolution global atmospheric simulations, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-5900, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-5900, 2022.

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