Quantile Mapping Climate Model Simulations

7 July 2022 (Thursday) 11:00 am - 12:00 pm CST

By Simon Papalexiou, Chandra Rupa Rajulapati

This webinar will discuss quantile mapping to bias-correct the climate model simulations for use in hydrological modeling and risk assessment studies.

Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) aims to understand better the historical climate and predict its future variability in response to changes in radiative forcing through a multi-model context. In hydrological analysis, climate model outputs are typically useful for risk assessment, mitigation, and planning strategies. Climate models have systematic biases or errors (mostly due to the inability of climate models to reflect natural variability in observations) with respect to observed hydrological variables. Bias-adjustment or bias-correction techniques are typically applied before using climate simulations for informed decisions.

In this workshop, you’ll hear about:

Introduction to latest phase of CMIP, CMIP6; and how to download the data from ESGF (Earth System Grid Federation) portal.
Biases in temperature and precipitation in CMIP6 at global scales and importance of including higher-order statistics in estimating the biases.
Different methods of quantile mapping, including the basic technique, detrended quantile mapping, quantile delta mapping, and semi-parametric quantile mapping, along with examples.
R-packages for quantile mapping, with case studies.
Advantages/disadvantages of quantile mapping.