11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008

Downscaling of Regional Climate Model Precipitation for

Urban Hydrology
J. Olsson1*, C.B. Uvo2, E. Kjellstrm1
1

Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, 601 76 Norrkping, Sweden

Dept. Water Resources Engineering, Lund University, Box 112, 221 00 Lund, Sweden
*Corresponding author, e-mail jonas.olsson@smhi.se

ABSTRACT
The demand from society for assessments of the climate change impact on also regional and
even local scales is rapidly increasing. In an urban hydrological context, such assessment
requires estimation of future precipitation intensities as observed by a single gauge (i.e. in a
point). Due to the coarse spatial resolution of climate models, their precipitation output can
not be directly used to make any inference concerning point value intensities. In this paper, a
simple stochastic method to downscale precipitation from a climate model grid box to an
arbitrary point inside it is proposed and tested. The method is based on a separation between
the convective and large-scale components of the total precipitation and assumptions about
the typical extensions of the associated synoptic systems. Evaluation for the city of Kalmar,
Sweden, indicated that the downscaling method is able to generate point value series with
properties very similar to point value observations, both in terms of extremes and general
statistics (a similar performance is indicated in ongoing testing also in two other locations).
One possible application of the method is to downscale model simulated climate change
scenarios to assess future changes in point precipitation.

KEYWORDS
Regional climate model; precipitation; downscaling

INTRODUCTION
There is today a widespread consensus that global warming is a real threat to the future
climate (IPCC, 2007). General Circulation Models (GCM) are used to predict the associated
climate impacts on a global scale. However, not least in light of the recent strong medial focus
on the climate change issue, the demand from society for assessments of the climate change
impact on also regional and even local scales is rapidly increasing. This necessitates some
form of downscaling of the GCM results from a resolution of typically 1-3 down to much
finer spatial grids, and even virtually point values if changes in local processes are to be
assessed. There are today two main downscaling strategies: dynamical and statistical. The
former implies that a Regional Climate Model (RCM) is nested inside the GCM to increase
the spatial resolution (to typically 20-50 km); the latter is based on statistical relationships
between GCM results and regional or local observations.
The main objective of this preliminary study is to assess the possibility to relate the result in
terms of spatially averaged precipitation from an RCM grid box to point value observations
from a nearby located precipitation gauge. The key issue is with which accuracy RCM results
can be statistically downscaled to represent the precipitation process as manifested in a single
point. The underlying motivation for the study is urban hydrological assessment, i.e. what is
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11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008

the expected impact of climate change in terms of flooding and other problems (e.g. pollution
transport) in the storm drainage network of large cities. To be accurately described by
computer models, this urban runoff process requires point value precipitation data, i.e. even
the spatial resolution of RCM:s is far too coarse. Also the temporal resolution required for
urban hydrological assessment is very high (~5-10 min), but recent RCM output is at least
approaching these time scales.

DATA AND STUDY REGION

The regional climate model data consist of results from an RCM named RCA3, which stands
for the third version of the Rossby Centre Atmospheric model (Kjellstrm et al., 2005). This
model has been developed at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute. The
model domain covers Europe and is shown in Figure 1a. The spatial resolution of the results
used here was 4949 km and the time step 30 min. Data from grid boxes close to the
observation stations (Figure 1b) were used.
A general difficulty with GCM results, whether further downscaled or not, concerns their
comparability with observations representing the present climate. As (1) climate exhibits lowfrequency oscillations (on decadal time scales or even longer, e.g. NAO phases) and (2) GCM
runs start from arbitrary initial conditions, it is not certain that GCM results in a given time
period are in phase with the real climate. Averaging over several decades may reduce the
problem, but to which degree is difficult to assess, as is the relative contributions from model
errors and phase errors. Comparing GCM-driven RCM results with observations is
therefore associated with large uncertainty and requires long time series, with seldom exist for
short-term point precipitation observations. An alternative strategy, used in this experiment, is
to drive the RCA3 model not by GCM results but by data from the ERA-40 reanalysis
(Uppala et al., 2005). ERA-40 data from 60 vertical levels with resolutions 2 in space and 6 h
in time were interpolated to the RCA 3 grid and then used to specify the boundary conditions
for an RCA3 run. Thus the model boundary conditions were perfect (within the accuracy of
the ERA40 data set), which provides the most suitable RCA3 results for comparison with
observations and reduces the need for long time periods. In this experiment, the time period
used extends from the mid-80s (when high-resolution observations started) to year 2000
(when the available ERA-40-driven RCA3 data ended), i.e. covering ~15 years.
Precipitation observations from single gauges in three Swedish cities (Kalmar (1), Jnkping
(2), Stockholm (3); Figure 1b), representing climate regions of both maritime and more inland
character, were used. The observations were obtained by tipping-bucket gauges, recording the
time when 0.2 mm had accumulated, and were aggregated to 30-min values to conform with
the RCA3 output time step (Hernebring, 2006).

DOWNSCALING METHODOLOGY
A simple stochastic scheme was formulated and tested for downscaling the RCA3
precipitation from a grid box to possible realisations of the precipitation in a point within the
box (Figure 2). The method is based on not only total precipitation from the RCA3 model, but
also on its two components: large-scale and convective precipitation (which when summed
adds up to the total precipitation). For each of these components, a typical spatial coverage (%
of grid box) needs to be estimated. For example, as illustrated in Figure 2, the rainfall
typically produced by a convective system may perhaps occupy 1/9=11% (=cc) of the grid
box (~250 km with a grid size of 4949 km). Thus the actual precipitation intensity is 9/1=9
2

Downscaling of climate model precipitation

11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008

a

3
2

Figure 1. RCA3 domain (Europe; a) and location of gauges (Sweden; b).

times the grid box mean intensity and it has 11% probability of occurring in a certain point
within the grid box. Rainfall produced by a large-scale system (e.g. stratiform), on the other
hand, may typically cover 89% (=cl) of the grid box, i.e. with 89% probability producing
precipitation with an intensity of 9/8=1.125 the grid box mean in a certain point (Figure 2).
In this experiment the overall applicability of the proposed simple scheme was assessed and
the parameters roughly optimised for the three Swedish cities. As urban hydrological
modelling is critically dependent upon a proper representation of precipitation extremes, in
the optimisation of the scheme the main focus was on reproducing the observed 30-min
precipitation extremes as expressed in Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) curves. As shortterm precipitation extremes in the region are generally produced by convective systems, the
key parameter in this case is cc. The large-scale precipitation, on the other hand, governs
general statistical properties of 30-min time series such as the mean 30-min volume and the
wet fraction (i.e. probability of a non-zero volume). It was however found difficult to
reproduce the observed general statistics by optimising cl. The reason for this was that the
RCA model too frequently generates small amounts of large-scale precipitation (Risnen et
al., 2004). To compensate for this, a relatively low value of cl had to be used to get a proper
wet fraction, but as a consequence the generated intensities became overestimated. Therefore
a different strategy was adopted, in which cl was omitted (or, equivalently, kept fixed at 1)
and replaced by a threshold value tl below which all large-scale precipitation was ignored.
Assumed coverage

Large-scale

Actual intensity

Probability in a point

RCA/(8/9)=RCA*1.125

8/9 = 89% = c l

RCA/(1/9)=RCA*9

1/9 = 11% = cc

Convective
P

Figure 2. Schematic of the downscaling methodology.

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11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008

RESULTS
Figures 3-5 show some examples of results from the simple downscaling scheme, for the
Kalmar gauge (nr. 1 in Figure 1b). The parameters were roughly optimised by trial-and-error
and the final values obtained were cl=8% and tl=0.18 mm. All results have been averaged over
10 realizations from the stochastic scheme, to obtain stable estimates
Figure 3 shows the result in terms of IDF curves, return periods 15 (top left), 5 (top right), 3
(bottom left) and 1 (bottom right) year(s). As expected, the short-term extremes in the grid
box averages are substantially lower than in the point observations for short durations. For the
maximum duration considered (1 day), however, the grid box values are in fact rather close to
the observed IDF curves. Thus, at a daily scale the local (i.e. grid box) precipitation extremes
simulated by the RCA3 model appear to well agree with point observations, which indicates
that the RCA3 precipitation is realistic with respect to local extremes. Overall, the IDF curves
obtained from the downscaled time series very well reproduce the observed curves, for all
durations and return periods considered. There is a weak tendency towards underestimation,
but only with a small amount.

Figure 3. IDF curves for Kalmar from observed point series (solid), RCA3 grid box average
series (dashed) and downscaled point series (dotted).

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11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008

Figure 4a shows the result in terms of four general statistical properties of the time series: (1)
mean 30-min volume (mm), (2) standard deviation (mm), (3) mean non-zero 30-min volume
(mm) and (4) probability of non-zero 30-min volume (-). For the grid box averages, the nonzero probability is substantially higher than in the observations. A higher value is expected for
spatial averages than for point values, but the difference is likely exacerbated by the
overestimated frequency of wet 30-min periods in the RCA3 data discussed above. The mean
30-min volume is also overestimated in the grid box averages but to a lesser degree. In the
downscaled series, all properties are close to the observed. Figure 4b shows the
autocorrelation function for lags 1-6. In the observations, the autocorrelation is ~0.5 for lag 1
and then decreases to ~0.25 for lag 6. For the time series of grid box averages, the value at lag
1 is ~0.8 and at lag 6 ~0.6. It is expected to have a higher autocorrelation in spatial averages,
but also in this case the difference compared with the point observations is probably amplified
by the inaccuracies in the RCA3 data. The erroneously generated precipitation in the RCA3
model often occurs in the form of long, uninterrupted sequences of similar (small) values,
which increases autocorrelation. The autocorrelations in the downscaled series does not
perfectly reproduce the shape of the observed function, but overall the level is very
reasonable.
a

Figure 4. General descriptive statistics (a) and autocorrelation functions (b) for Kalmar from
observed point series (black bar, solid line), RCA3 grid box average series (grey bar, dashed
line) and downscaled point series (white bar, dotted line).
Figure 5 shows the result in terms of some event-related properties, mean and standard
deviation of event duration (Figure 5a), event volume (Figure 5b) and length of dry period
between events (Figure 5c). As expected from the results shown in Figures 3 and 4, and the
associated discussion, as compared with point observations the events are longer and the dry
periods shorter in the time series of grid box averages. The mean event volume is, however,
well reproduces. After downscaling, also the properties of event durations are well
reproduced. The dry periods lengths become somewhat overestimated though, possibly
because the thresholding removes also some minor precipitation events that should have been
regarded as true.
a

Figure 5. Statistical properties of event duration (a), event volume (b) and dry period length
(c) for Kalmar from observed point series (black), RCA3 grid box average series (grey) and
downscaled point series (white).

Olsson et al.

11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK

From this preliminary evaluation, it appears possible to combine RCM precipitation output,
separated into components representing convective and large-scale precipitation, with a
simple stochastic scheme reflecting spatial coverage, to create reasonably accurate realisations
of the associated point rainfall process. The downscaled point precipitation series compare
well with observations both in terms of general descriptive statistics and extreme values. The
results support the possibility to statistically relate RCM results to short-term point
observations. One possible application discussed above is to use dynamically downscaled
GCM output to assess future changes in point precipitation, which however will require a
very careful treatment of the calibration for present climate. However, also other applications
may be envisioned, e.g. simulating point precipitation properties in ungauged areas.
We believe the present methodology may constitute a step forward in the search for tools to
estimate future point precipitation. Most efforts to date have involved different versions of socalled delta change, where an observed rainfall time series is modified in line with changes
found in RCM output. The proposed, process-based methodology is likely more flexible than
delta change, which is heavily constrained by the properties of the available observations. It
should however be emphasised that it is associated with uncertainty, e..g. because of the
simplified descriptions of rainfall generating emchanisms in climate models.
Future work will include the following activities: (1) optimisation of the coverage parameters
(cc and cl) for the different cities, sensitivity testing, split sample calibration, (2) estimation of
coverage not as fixed areas but as given by additional RCA3 output parameters, e.g.
cloudiness, (3) evaluation and optimisation for not only ERA-40-driven RCA3 results but for
GCM-driven RCA3 results representing present climate, (4) application of optimised
downscaling scheme to GCM-driven RCA3 results representing future climate.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The study was funded by The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural
Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS) and The Foundation for Strategic Environmental
Research (MISTRA).

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Downscaling of climate model precipitation