Abstract
Precipitation and surface temperature are two important quantities whose variations are closely related through various physical processes. In the present study, we evaluated the precipitation-surface temperature (P-T) relationship in 17 climate models involved in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) for the IPCC Assessment Report version 5. Most models performed reasonably well at simulating the large-scale features of the P-T correlation distribution. Based on the pattern correlation of the P-T correlation distribution, the models performed better in November-December-January-February-March (NDJFM) than in May-June-July-August-September (MJJAS) except for the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and the performance was generally better over the land than over the ocean. Seasonal dependence was more obvious over the land than over the ocean and was more obvious over the mid- and high-latitudes than over the tropics. All of the models appear to have had difficulty capturing the P-T correlation distribution over the mid-latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere in MJJAS. The spatial variability of the P-T correlation in the models was overestimated compared to observations. This overestimation tended to be larger over the land than over the ocean and larger over the mid- and high-latitudes than over the tropics. Based on analyses of selected model ensemble simulations, the spread of the P-T correlation among the ensemble members appears to have been small. While the performance in the P-T correlation provides a general direction for future improvement of climate models, the specific reasons for the discrepancies between models and observations remain to be revealed with detailed and comprehensive evaluations in various aspects.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Adler, R. F., and Coauthors, 2003: The version 2 global precipitation climatology project (GPCP) monthly precipitation analysis (1979-present). Journal of Hydrometeorology, 4, 1147–1167.
Idso, S. B., and R. C. Balling Jr., 1992: US temperature/precipitation relationships: implications for future “greenhouse” climates. Agriculture and Forest Meteorology, 58(1–2), 143–147.
Isaac, G. A., and R. A. Stuart, 1992: Temperature-precipitation relation-ships for Canadian stations. J. Climate, 5, 822–830.
Legates, D. R., and C. J. Willmott, 1990: Mean seasonal and spatial variability in global surface air temperature. Theor. Appl. Climatol., 41, 11–21.
Madden, R. A., and J. Williams, 1978: The correlation between temperature and precipitation in the United States and Europe. Mon. Wea. Rev., 106, 142–147.
Power, S., F. Tseitkin, V. Mehta, B. Lavery B, S. Torok, and N. Holbrook, 1999: Decadal climate variability in Australia during the twentieth century. Int. J. Climatol., 19, 169–184.
Rebetez, M., 1996: Seasonal relationship between temperature, precipitation and snow cover in a mountainous region. Theor. Appl. Climatol., 54(3–4), 99–106.
Rusticucci, M., and O. Penalba, 2000: Interdecadal changes in the precipitation seasonal cycle over southern South America and their relationship with surface temperature. Climate Research, 16, 1–15.
Smith, T. M., R. W. Reynolds, T. C. Peterson, and J. Lawrimore, 2008: Improvements to NOAA’s historical merged land-ocean surface temperature analysis (1880-2006). J. Climate, 21, 2283–2296.
Taylor, K. E., 2001: Summarizing multiple aspects of model performance in single diagram. J. Geophys. Res., 106, D7, 7183-7192.
Taylor, K. E., R. J. Stouffer, and G. A. Meehl, 2012: An overview of CMIP5 and the experiment design. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 93, 485–498, doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00094.1.
Tout, D. G., 1987: Precipitation-temperature relationship in England and Wales summers. Int. J. Climatol., 7(2), 181–184.
Trenberth, K. E., and D. J. Shea, 2005: Relationships between precipitation and surface temperature. Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L14703, doi: 10.1029/2005GL022760.
Vose, R. S., R. L. Schmoyer, P. M. Steuer, T. C. Peterson, R. Heim, T. R. Karl, and J. K. Eischeid, 1992: The Global Historical Climatology Network: longterm monthly temperature, precipitation, sea level pressure and station pressure data. ND-P 041, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, USA, 26pp.
Wang, J.-J., R. F. Adler, and G. Gu, 2008: Tropical rainfall-surface temperature relations using tropical rainfall measuring mission precipitation data. J. Geophys. Res., 113, D18115, doi: 10.1029/2007JD009540.
Wu, B., T. Zhou, and T. Li, 2009: Contrast of rainfall-SST relationships in the western North Pacific between the ENSO-developing and ENSO-decaying summers. J. Climate, 22, 4398–4405.
Wu, R., and B. P. Kirtman, 2007: Regimes of local airsea interactions and implications for performance of forced simulations. Climate Dyn., 29, 393–410.
Wu, R., and J. L. Kinter III, 2010: Atmosphere-ocean relationship in the midlatitude North Pacific: Seasonal dependence and east-west contrast. J. Geophys. Res., 115, D06101, doi: 10.1029/2009JD012579.
Wu, R., B. P. Kirtman, and K. Pegion, 2006: Local air-sea relationship in observations and model simulations. J. Climate, 19, 4914–4932.
Zhao, W., and M. A. K. Khalil, 1993: The relationship between precipitation and temperature over the contiguous United States. J. Climate, 6, 1232–1236.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wu, R., Chen, J. & Wen, Z. Precipitation-surface temperature relationship in the IPCC CMIP5 models. Adv. Atmos. Sci. 30, 766–778 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-012-2130-8
Received:
Revised:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-012-2130-8