Improvements in the simulation of surface climatology over the European region with a nested modeling system

Is this paper we report on the results of a present day climate simulation over the European region using a Regional Climate Model (RegCM)nested within a General Circulation Model (GCM). Precipitation and surface air temperature results over different European subregions are compared with observations and with results from previous simulations by Marinucci and Giorgi [1992] and other modeling groups. Based on a number of measures of simulation skill such as monthly and seasonal biases and spatial correlations, the RegCM performance is substantially improved compared to that of Marinucci and Giorgi [1992], it compares well with that of other recent experiments and it is better than that of the driving GCM. Seasonal precipitation and surface air temperature biases over European subregions of 10(5)-10(7) km(2) size are mostly in the range of +/-25% of observations and +/-2 degrees C, respectively. These biases appear to represent the level of accuracy characteristic of present regional modeling systems over Europe at the seasonal and regional scale.