Reducing Model Structural Uncertainty in Climate Model Projections—A Rank-Based Model Combination Approach

Abstract

Future changes in monthly precipitation are typically evaluated by estimating the shift in the long-term mean/variability or based on the change in the marginal distribution. General circulation model (GCM) precipitation projections deviate across various models and emission scenarios and hence provide no consensus on the expected future change. The current study proposes a rank/percentile-based multimodel combination approach to account for the fact that alternate model projections do not share a common time indexing. The approach is evaluated using 10 GCM historical runs for the current period and is validated by comparing with two approaches: equal weighting and a non-percentile-based optimal weighting. The percentile-based optimal combination exhibits lower values of RMSE in estimating precipitation terciles. Future (2000–49) multimodel projections show that January and July precipitation exhibit an increase in simulated monthly extremes (25th and 75th percentiles) over many climate regions of the conterminous United States.