INTERCOMPARISON OF BIAS-CORRECTION DATA SOURCES AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON WATERSHED-SPECIFIC DOWNSCALING CLIMATE PROJECTIONS

Climate projections developed by general circulation models (GCM) are often used in watershed modeling applications to project future hydrologic changes. In many models, the climate projections are downscaled to individual map units represented by grid cells or subbasins. Uncertainty of downscaled climate projections are a product of uncertainties arising mainly from the model itself from the representative concentration pathway (RCP), and from the downscaling procedure. Other sources of uncertainty may include the historical observations used for GCM bias correction and data aggregation from GCM grids to map (often subbasin) units. This study evaluated effects of three sources of historical data (ground-based weather station network, NCDC, and two gridded datasets, NEXRAD and PRISM) on historical variability, and shifts and uncertainty in precipitation and temperature projections. Climate projections from six GCMs and three RCPs were evaluated in 54 subbasins of the Smoky Hill River watershed in the U.S. Central Great Plains. Bias correction of GCM projections reduced bias of watershed-average annual precipitation in the historical period to near zero, but subbasin-specific variability remained in future projections with little difference among bias-correction data sources. For minimum and maximum temperatures, the GCM ensemble statistics for basin-average and subbasin-specific future projections were similar for all bias-correction data sources. Increase in RCP forcing was found to widen the uncertainty in future projections. Overall, the uncertainty due to data source selection was smaller than the uncertainty due to GCM model and RCP forcing selection. The results demonstrate that statistical downscaling is essential to account for local climate factors within a watershed, and that both weather station-based and gridded bias-correction data sources can be used effectively, but that future climate projections may inherit the historical bias in a selected data source. These inherent uncertainties associated with application of GCMs in hydrological and geospatial modeling should be carefully considered for understanding climate projections when building watershed models and interpreting the results.

Automated summary

Climate projections from general circulation models (GCM) are often downscaled to grid cells or subbasins to project future hydrologic changes. Uncertainties in downscaled climate projections arise mainly from the models themselves, representative concentration pathways (RCP), and the downscaling procedure. This study evaluated the effects of different historical data sources on precipitation and temperature projections in 54 subbasins of the Smoky Hill River watershed in the U.S. Central Great Plains.