ENSEMBLES Research Theme 5: Evaluation

RT5 project info

Coordinators
Albert Klein Tank (KNMI) & Elisa Manzini (INGV)

Objective
To perform a comprehensive and independent evaluation of the performance of the ensemble simulation/prediction system against observations/analyses.

Scope
RT5 will perform a comprehensive and independent evaluation of the performance of the ENSEMBLES simulation-prediction system against analyses/observations, including the production of a high-resolution observational dataset necessary to perform the task. The evaluation will cover all spatial scales and seasonal to decadal timescales in an integrated way. The evaluation will be performed fully independently from the ENSEMBLES system and will consider processes and phenomena, forecast quality, extreme events in observational and RCM data, and impact models when forced with downscaled ERA-40, hindcasts and gridded observational datasets. The analysis will include an assessment of the simulations of the climate variability in the model output made available by RT1, RT2A and RT2B and RT3. The investigation will be accompanied by a corresponding assessment of the observed variability using global observations data sets and a specially produced high-resolution data set for the European region. The analysis on the European region will focus in particular on extreme events both in high-resolution simulations and in the observations. RT5 will interact with RT4 in the studies and understanding of processes providing the evaluation of systematic errors and biases that will serve as a basis for RT4 investigations.

RT5 progress