Furthermore, these uncertainties may worsen as the number of water measurement stations around the world decrease — providing fewer opportunities to verify modelling data on the ground, according to the authors of the study, which was published in the latest edition of the Journal of Hydrometeorology.
Christof Lorenz and Harald Kunstmann, from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research in Germany, analysed three of the most widely used modern global atmosphere and ocean models, and compared precipitation and temperature estimates made with them for the period 1989–2006 with direct observations made over the same time-frame.
They found large discrepancies between the two. In some regions, figures for mean precipitation deviated by up to four litres per square metre.
The models play a key role in hydrological and hydrometeorological research, assimiliating large quantities of historical observational data.
The study highlights that "other studies use [such] models for climate trend studies. We show clearly that such calculations are very dangerous and should not be performed". "We also think that differences between water budget estimates are an indication that our understanding of global and larger scale regional water cycles is still insufficient," Lorenz and Kunstmann told SciDev.Net....
Water droplet shot by fir0002 | flagstaffotos.com.au, Wikimedia Commons, under the following Creative Commons license: Attribution NonCommercial Unported 3.0
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